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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.
"meaning it could someday be considered for the world's first interstellar mission."
This is the longest timescale for 'someday' ever. Not going to happen in the lifetime of any descendent we can imagine.
If there was anyone on that planet, we could talk to them for sure. But no visiting is going to happen before humans cease to be creatures we recognise as the same as us.
The quotes should have been around 'Nearby' as well as 'Earth-Like'. Throw me a freckn bone.
Proxima Centauri is a flare star. Good luck with it being Earth-like.
ours or theirs?
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.
Minimally we need to start seriously looking at a robotic probe.What is the time line for something that does a flyby? Can we get a probe up to 10%c or are we looking at even 1%c as too hard? 50 years is pretty cool. 500 or more years would be taking the risk that two things happen, one civilization falls enough that we forget we sent it. Or that in the next 500 years we easily build way faster probes.
Also with 50 years and we find something worth visiting, and now can think about sending people. 500 and we are back to science fiction.
Minimally, this justifies building one huge honking telescope to get a good look at this planet.
Physics disagrees.
http://www.space.com/32546-interstellar-spaceflight-stephen-hawking-project-starshot.html
starshot project and similar, preliminary designs of tiny probes less than a gram, in a swarm of hundreds to thouands accelerated to sizeable fraction (10-20%) of the speed of light seem like the only plausible way to explore other "nearby" star systems for the next century.
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
That would require Intrepid-class starships for the really useful and good holodecks, so that's quite some time into the future.
slashdot: A failed experiment.
The fastest probe we ever has built goes 0.023%. It is doubtful we will even get to 1%, ever.
I like the "to announce" part. Like, if they haven't announced it, why are you reporting on it? Maybe there's a reason they haven't actually announced it yet! Perhaps the data is tentative and admits of another explanation, which, on further review, will prove to be true. Perhaps it's simply one guy's wild-ass guess based on incomplete data.
Maybe, just maybe, there's a reason he's not making any comment? Like, they want to avoid making false statements in public and embarrassing themselves? Quite unlike certain (most?) Internet "news" sites which are perfectly happy both to make false statements and to embarrass themselves? "Who cares? Just give us those clicks!"
Anyway, this is pretty cool if confirmed, but at this point, I'm treating it with all the seriousness it deserves, which is approximately zero.
Under a decade? Try 30,000 years.
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"
The fastest probe we ever has built goes 0.023%. It is doubtful we will even get to 1%, ever.
And yet decades have technology has improved since, and we've never built a probe for this purpose. Everything else has been built with planetary observation/fly-by in mind, not blazing out of the solar system for blazing's sake.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
At 1g? That will get you to c in about a year (disregarding relativistic effects), so under a decade to travel just over 4 lightyears sounds like the right ballpark.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Our Children will see Alpha Centauri in their lifetime via small probes propelled by lasers here on earth.
check it out....
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/100-million-plan-will-send-probes-to-the-nearest-star1/
"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.
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....
Oddly, your comment reminded me of how much progress has halted, not to say reversed. We had SR-71. We had Concorde. We had the Space Shuttle. We had man on the moon.
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
There is nothing stopping us from building a probe that goes that fast except for the expense (more weight) and some engineering (bigger/better shielding, more efficient rockets, bigger fuel production). We have the tech for it, we just don't have the political willpower to do it, I mean, who really wants to have a nuclear reactor going up in the air, something goes wrong and the US will be turned to dust and be inhabitable for 1000 years.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Oh wait you're using a MAGICAL fuel source and engine. Well, that's called CHEATING.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
1% C is too hard. The current fastest man made object is the Juno mission that made it to 25 miles per second. Considering that light speed is 186,000 miles per second, we've only ever reached 0.01% of the speed of light.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Diminishing returns kid. When you get older and the stars fade a little, you'll realize the bit about diminishing returns...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You started off with some very good points about precision in speech, and then you wrote the above sentence which is so wholly incorrect that it verges on funny. :-) Although I understood what you meant (I'm sure that most readers did), it's certainly not what you wrote.
Short version: the "laws of physics" are invented by Man and limited by our understanding, while the "laws of nature" or the underlying principles of reality are inherent to the universe around us. Your sentence confused the two things completely.
The laws of physics are in continuous flux as physicists redefine them, and they always will be. As they evolve, so will our capability to manipulate the fabric of reality around us using the physics at our disposal. Of one thing we can be certain: what we will be able to do in 50 years' time would be seen as preposterous science fiction today if we could glimpse the future.
Your total certainty about what is bollocks based only on our few-hundred year old state of physics was extremely funny. :-)
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....
Oddly, your comment reminded me of how much progress has halted, not to say reversed. We had SR-71. We had Concorde. We had the Space Shuttle. We had man on the moon.
Progress was neither halted nor reversed. We had to take a step back and focus on efficiency, rather than just relying on brute force. All of those systems worked fine, but they were just too resource-intensive to justify their operation. We'll get back to the moon soon enough, and it will cost a tiny fraction of what the Apollo missions did. The SR-71 is just unnecessary today given better satellite coverage and better optics. The Concorde... that may never be back.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
You're exaggerating the effect that a simple nuclear reactor would have even in a catastrophic failure by a whole lot.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
who really wants to have a nuclear reactor going up in the air, something goes wrong and the US will be turned to dust and be inhabitable for 1000 years.
I don't claim to be a nuclear scientist, but I'm pretty sure that even in the worst-case scenario that would not happen.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
More like progress has gone sideways. The focus has changed from high speed vehicles to high fuel efficiency vehicles ever since the 1970s oil crisis. It's the same reason you do not see cars powered by Wankel engines or turbines. It's not that we do not have the technology it just does not make economic sense.
Today we have satellite reconnaissance and regardless of how fast you make a jet aircraft a SAM rocket will prove to be faster. You might as well send a high-altitude relatively slow drone like the Global Hawk to make the reconnaissance.
Things might change though. There has been more emphasis on scramjet research in the last decade and the proposals for the next fighter aircraft after the F-22 have sometimes included variable cycle engines.
I saw that movie.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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.
Of course it's still nameless stupid. We haven't got there yet to ask the locals what the planet's called.
just 4.25 light years away - there's your problem right there.
Beard? Says who? I think that has more to do with Michelangelo (and more recently, Monte Python).
BTW, have you never heard of the barber paradox? The barber who shaves every man who doesn't shave himself. Got is quite able to be that barber, whether He shaves himself or not.
PET stand for "Positron Emission Tomography". A "Positron" is identical to an electron but it has a positive charge. It is anti-matter. Want to see anti-matter in use every day? Go get your head scanned.
If you can accelerate, you can decelerate with the same technology. That assumes of course fuel. And I did say *if*.
I don't think the issue with reviving the Saturn V is the fuel, it's the cost of building those engines, and everything else that goes with it. (Including more reliable sources of electricity than Apollo 13 carried, although I guess that's solved.)
to bring you an announcement: the Jesuits will be there first.
Ok, so it's science fiction; The Sparrow (and its sequel, Children of God). But it's good sci-fi.
Not even. We are still working on SCRAMJET/RAMJET aircraft as you just mentioned. And thats just things we know of like the X-51, it doesnt even account for all the black projects the Air Force has cooking.
How the heck did you manage to beat slashdot's auto-link?
He had his post sent via antimatter rocket.
Astronomers To Announce Discovery of a Nearby 'Earth-Like' Planet
Would've been nice to have some warning of this pre-announcement. Cuh.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I was responding to the (strange) claim that it would take 30.000 years to reach a nearby star even with an engine providing a constant 1g acceleration. Where we get that acceleration is left as an exercise to the reader.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Much like Intel's tick-tock approach on a larger scale. That didn't slow down CPU progress much.
Fastest man made object is believed to be a lowly manhole cover at the top of a nuclear test. Unofficially, it was calculated to be traveling at 45 miles per second.
That means we've gone to over .024% the speed of light. We just need to detonate a focused nuclear bomb under the probe with a manhole cover as a blast shield, plus another 17500+ years to coast to Proxima Centauri.
Whoosh, that's the sound sarcasm makes as it passes you by
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
There is a project that would involve accelerating tiny probes to a fraction (0.2c) of the speed of light, allowing a mission to a nearby solar system. Also, that system is moving towards us at about 21km/s so the longer we wait, the shorter the trip gets (but not by much, heh).
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
We have accelerated particles to almost the speed of light in particle accelerators. The point being that we have to think about how small we can make a probe, and how can we accelerate that tiny device (likely light sails and lasers from Earth).
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
we should make this probe capable of self-repair using available materials.
in fact, it should also be able to create other probes once it reaches its destination.
and every good project needs a good codename.
I suggest...Project Berserker.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Not even. We are still working on SCRAMJET/RAMJET aircraft as you just mentioned.
Given that the first ramjet flew in 1939, and the first scramjet in 1991 (both by SU/RU), I'm not terribly impressed with our speed of progress...
It's name is Rann.
Paging Adam Strange, Adam Strange, zeta beam for you from Rann....
mark
As I said in my last answer to you: you should read more.
E.g.: http://www.electric-sailing.co...
Or: https://en.wiki2.org/wiki/Inte...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Just to be clear, the proposed cost of this "get to Alpha Centauri in 20 years" project is $100M for a "nanocraft" that moves at 0.2C. To put this number in comparison, it is approximately 2.3% of the cost of the Large Hadron Collider, which we built. It is not inconceivable that, within 50 years, we could place real, live, people on this planet. That said, it would require a re-prioritization.
You left out the part about doing this repeatedly.
The cool part about Orion propulsion was that it seemed quite plausible to scale it up to ships the size of a city block or more, and get those giant ships to Alpha Centauri in less than a century. They'd just make kind of a mess in the atmosphere on their way up.
using as reference the speed of the fastest man-made space object
Was this 'object' actually designed for interstellar travel? If not then it is irrelevant. It's like saying the fastest bird only flies at 30 mph so what hope do we ever have of breaking the sound barrier. We have aircraft that can travel over 2000 mph because we designed them to do that. We have had the tech to reach around 0.08c since the 1960s. All we would need is the money to build the ship and admittedly it would be very, very, very expensive. Well unless it worked like an open source software project with people donating their time for free, but then of course it would take orders of magnitude longer.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
and we really don't have anything that can travel fast enough to get us there in less than tens of thousands of years.
Actually we really do. Stop spreading misinformation. We have had nuclear power since the 1940s. A lot of you people seemed to have forgotten this amazing 20th century invention and want to pretend that chemical rockets or ultra-weak ion propulsion are the only options based on current tech. They are not.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
They'd just make kind of a mess in the atmosphere on their way up.
Which means you basically have to build them off planet. At a Lagrange point or on the moon or whatever. Yes it would probably add hundreds of years to the project to do that, but the alternative may be to never build an interstellar ship.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
One of the points of Orion was that it provided more than enough power to lift heavy vehicles from Earth's surface. (This is the hardest part for much space travel, though certainly not for interstellar travel.) If you're motivated enough -- say, if you realize that your planet is about to be rendered uninhabitable by a major asteroid strike or a previously-unsuspected large-scale variation in the Sun's output -- it'll get more off the planet quicker than anything else we've thought of.
That's exactly the point cheesybagel was trying to make. His definition of efficiency is a lot broader than yours, though.
James P. Hogan's comments from: https://web.archive.org/web/20...
=====
An Earth set well into the next century is going through one of its periodical crises politically, and it looks as if this time they might really press the button for the Big One. If it happens, the only chance for our species to survive would be by preserving a sliver of itself elsewhere, which in practical terms means another star, since nothing closer is readily habitable. There isn't time to organize a manned expedition of such scope from scratch. However, a robot exploratory vessel is under construction to make the first crossing to the Centauri system, and it with a crash program it would be possible to modify the designs to carry sets of human genetic data coded electronically. Additionally, a complement of incubator/nanny/tutor robots can be included, able to convert the electronic data back into chemistry and raise/educate the ensuing offspring while others prepare surface habitats and supporting infrastructure, when a habitable world is discovered. By the time we meet the "Chironians," their culture is into its fifth generation.
In the meantime, Earth went through a dodgy period, but managed in the end to muddle through. The fun begins when a generation ship housing a population of thousands arrives to "reclaim" the colony on behalf of the repressive, authoritarian regime that emerged following the crisis period. The Mayflower II brings with it all the tried and tested apparatus for bringing a recalcitrant population to heel: authority, with its power structure and symbolism, to impress; commercial institutions with the promise of wealth and possessions, to tempt and ensnare; a religious presence, to awe and instill duty and obedience; and if all else fails, armed military force to compel. But what happens when these methods encounter a population that has never been conditioned to respond?
The book has an interesting corollary. Around about the mid eighties, I received a letter notifying me that the story had been serialized in an underground Polish s.f. magazine. They hadn't exactly "stolen" it, the publishers explained, but had credited zlotys to an account in my name there, so if I ever decided to take a holiday in Poland the expenses would be covered (there was no exchange mechanism with Western currencies at that time). Then the story started surfacing in other countries of Eastern Europe, by all accounts to an enthusiastic reception. What they liked there, apparently, was the updated "Ghandiesque" formula on how bring down an oppressive regime when it's got all the guns. And a couple of years later, they were all doing it!
So I claim the credit. Forget all the tales you hear about the contradictions of Marxist economics, truth getting past the Iron Curtain via satellites and the Internet, Reagan's Star Wars program, and so on.
In 1989, after communist rule and the Wall came tumbling down, the annual European s.f. convention was held at Krakow in southern Poland, and I was invited as one of the Western guests. On the way home, I spent a few days in Warsaw and at last was able to meet the people who had published that original magazine. "Well, fine," I told them. "Finally, I can draw out all that money that you stashed away for me back in '85. One of the remarked-too hastily--that "It was worth something when we put it in the bank." (There had been two years of ruinous inflation following the outgoing regime's policy of sabotaging everything in order to be able to prove that the new ideas wouldn't work.) I said, resignedly, "Okay. How much are we talking about?" The one with a calculator tapped away for a few seconds, looked embarrassed, and announced, "Eight dollars and forty-three cents." So after the U.S. had spent trillions on its B-52s, Trident submarines, NSA, CIA, and the rest--all of it.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
And you consider this to be a benefit, or a problem? From this side of the Atlantic, I see it as a useful spin-off.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
... not one of which turned a profit, even after a decade.
QED.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
cheesybagel said "The focus has changed from high speed vehicles to high _fuel_ efficiency vehicles" (emphasis added).
One of the points of Orion was that it provided more than enough power to lift heavy vehicles from Earth's surface.
I never considered that to be one of its primary advantages. It's just too dirty. Not sustainable for multiple launches. It's primary advantage is that it can carry enough fuel with it to actually go somewhere interesting in a reasonable time period. Most propulsion systems cannot. We could just just set up a spacecraft manufacturing facility on the moon and launch from there.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Sure, given time, you wouldn't dream of launching from the ground, probably not even from the atmosphere or exosphere (pulse! pulse! pulse!). It seems to me, though, that setting up a "spacecraft manufacturing facility" (including materials production, fabrication and assembly) on the Moon is a project of many decades. Again, something you can launch this century would trump something you can't launch until next century, if you know that there isn't going to be a next century for Earth.
From a slightly different perspective, I'd happily put up with a large-scale Orion ground launch, yes, even in my back yard, to lift the equipment needed to divert a 10km dinosaur-killer asteroid. It would make a mess, but not as much of a mess as a hundred-teraton impact dumping a few thousand km^3 of rock vapor into the atmosphere.
It seems to me, though, that setting up a "spacecraft manufacturing facility" (including materials production, fabrication and assembly) on the Moon is a project of many decades.
Yes of course. I'd assume at least a 100-150 year minimum to properly set up such a facility complete with lunar mining, lunar nuclear reactors, probably earth moving equipment manufacturing, smelting and casting and machining. There is so much that would be either necessary or desirable that will take a long long time to get going.
As far as asteroids go I don't think an Orion ship would be able to change the course of any even moderately sized one. Or were you thinking as a means of getting some humans off planet to prevent the extinction of our species? In any case a pulsed nuclear ship big enough to do either of those missions would be prohibitively expensive.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
I'm thinking any plant capable of changing the course of a dinosaur-killer, at least in a timeframe of decades rather than millennia, would need an Orion to get it off the ground and deliver it to the asteroid. I'd imagine planting some sort of industrial complex, ready to crank out many square kilometers of solar panels and an array of ion drives or magnetic accelerators to spit out asteroidal metal as reaction mass. I'm not sure you're right that the Orion ship itself couldn't do the job, but I can't be bothered to run the numbers, as I'm not currently facing an actual threat of planetary annihilation.
And as for "prohibitively expensive", I agree -- except that priorities change when the alternative is certain extinction.
On a related note, while I was snooping around about Orion, I reread some info about the NERVA program. I hadn't fully realized how close that came to being deployed. It's depressing that politics cost us a reliable and affordable drive that could've taken humans to Mars and beyond. Of course, I suppose there are many who are relieved that we dodged a sky full of high-power nuclear reactors. Making compromises that disappoint people is kind of the purpose of politics.