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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.
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.
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
Making an anti-matter powered rocket is doable with current technology
Uhm, no. That would require:
- an antimatter rocket engine
- antimatter containment
- antimatter
None of those is "current technology". We can create beams of antimatter (particles, not even atoms), but with terrible efficiency.
Of these, we can only trap a few dozens at a time, and not for very long. Once they escape containment, they disappear in a "puff" of gamma rays.
If we could contain more antimatter, it would probably be used to build more powerful bombs first, so I'm kinda hoping it won't be in the near future.
Making an antimatter rocket is "do-able" for some value of do-able, but making the antimatter is whole 'nother issue. According to Wikipedia, estimates put the cost of a gram of antimatter somewhere between $25 billion (2006) and $62 trillion (1999). Given the 2014 gross world product was about $78 trillion, the puts the price somewhere between "a lot" and "all of the money".
If we started now, I guess we could build a two-copy redundant probe set in 20-50 years that would take 400-4000 years to get to Proxima using either ion propulsion or nuclear pulse propulsion (Orion type) (assume max roughly 1% light speed). The probe set would cost $10-1,000 billion depending on how you amortize costs, R&D and NRE, launch facilities, and fuel. The US, EU, and China have GDPs of roughly $17, $17, and $11 trillion, respectively, so that's the scale you'd be working against.
"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)