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Earth-like Planet Confirmed

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
edited December 2011 in Ten Forward
Is it any wonder that some of us just cruise sector space and look at the planets? :p

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16040655
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  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    It also confirms, somewhat, Roddenberry's theory that there are hundreds if not thousands of earth-like habitable planets out there. The next 50 years is going to be exciting!
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    gornman47 wrote:
    It also confirms, somewhat, Roddenberry's theory that there are hundreds if not thousands of earth-like habitable planets out there. The next 50 years is going to be exciting!

    Not if we dont find any workable means to get there in time, knowing about it is something totally different then doing something with it.

    But it might give us more persistance to keep working on something like that.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    gornman47 wrote:
    It also confirms, somewhat, Roddenberry's theory that there are hundreds if not thousands of earth-like habitable planets out there. The next 50 years is going to be exciting!

    Maybe but will they be "variants" of earth history? :)

    Matt
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    gornman47 wrote:
    It also confirms, somewhat, Roddenberry's theory that there are hundreds if not thousands of earth-like habitable planets out there. The next 50 years is going to be exciting!

    Hopefully this will motvate us more!!! I have gone back to education to learn Aerospace engineering. :D
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    Not if we dont find any workable means to get there in time, knowing about it is something totally different then doing something with it.

    But it might give us more persistance to keep working on something like that.

    Just knowing that such a planet is there will make people more willing to spend effort on trying to find ways to get there as compared to all of the Mercury/Venus/Jupiter-like planets discovered previously. Who knows? Some kid in school today might become our world's Zefram Cochrane.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    ChibiClari wrote: »
    Just knowing that such a planet is there will make people more willing to spend effort on trying to find ways to get there as compared to all of the Mercury/Venus/Jupiter-like planets discovered previously. Who knows? Some kid in school today might become our world's Zefram Cochrane.

    That will be me!!! :D:D:D
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    USA today says Kepler 22 is 600 Light years away. could someone remind me how LY work?

    That means traveling at the speed of light (if it is possible to do so) would take 600 years to get there, right?:confused:

    I hope some one makes a big breakthrou on that travel tech soon :)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    Well at warp one (speed of light: S.O.L. 1 billion kph) It would take 11hrs to cross our solar system and probably 5 years to reach the nearest star, soooo yeah even if we did break the light speed barrier it would take a long time but hopefully we find a habitable planet a little closer to home :)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    gornman47 wrote:
    Well at warp one (speed of light: S.O.L. 1 billion kph) It would take 11hrs to cross our solar system and probably 5 years to reach the nearest star, soooo yeah even if we did break the light speed barrier it would take a long time but hopefully we find a habitable planet a little closer to home :)

    Closest Star is Proxima Centuria which is 4.25 LY. so at Light speed it would take us 4 years and 3 or so months to get there.

    And as someone said earlier. unless we find a way to truely break the light barrier and excede light by multiples we would never get anywhere in any real decent length of time.

    Right now for us its like standing on the shore of the ocean and noticing an island out there. We cant reach because we cant build or boat or even swim as the case may be with some sort of sleeper/generation ship
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    gornman47 wrote:
    Well at warp one (speed of light: S.O.L. 1 billion kph) It would take 11hrs to cross our solar system and probably 5 years to reach the nearest star, soooo yeah even if we did break the light speed barrier it would take a long time but hopefully we find a habitable planet a little closer to home :)

    Whats wrong with the one we're in? :p

    On a serious note:

    Let us not be too quick to jump on the planet hopping bandwagon, there is no way we can 100% confirm that those worlds can sustain life as we know it. Keep in mind that just because something is earth like, doesn't necessarily mean it can sustain life.

    We're too far away to even contemplate practical star travel, no technology exist, YET. If advancement were to occur here on earth, I predict this is well within thousands of years in the future. However; the way the world economy is going, with it being on the verge of imploding on itself, many are not even focusing on space exploration.

    I don't think we'll ever even get to the point of star travel, since we're on the verge of nuking ourselves back into the stone age, or worse, out of existence.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    USA today says Kepler 22 is 600 Light years away. could someone remind me how LY work?

    That means traveling at the speed of light (if it is possible to do so) would take 600 years to get there, right?:confused:

    I hope some one makes a big breakthrou on that travel tech soon :)

    Light[TIME UNIT] works always relatively simply - at the speed of light, this is the nunber in [TIME UNIT] you need to get there. So yes, 600 light years means it takes 600 years to get there. If the distance was 10 light days, it would be 10 days away for a photon.

    ---
    But to make matters more complicated:
    That's how long it would take from our perspective here on Earth if we send something off to that place at the speed of light.

    If you actually managed to accelerate to that speed, relativity theory says that according to your own personal experience and all instruments you bring along with you, it would take no time and you basically travelled no distance at all. If you flew slightly less fast (which is somewhat more realistic, as we don't have the infinite energy required to bring you to the speed of light and we don't really want to deal witht he infinite mass you would have at that speed), the distance you measure and the time you measure would be less than 600 light years and less than 600 years (considerably less depending on how close you were to achieving speed of light). Still, 600 years pass on Earth, so if you return after 1,200 years of flight to report your findings, you'll have no idea who this will be...

    Relativity is a funny thing...
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    BlackV7 wrote:
    Whats wrong with the one we're in? :p
    Oh, I don't know. I never was happy with the tone of our chlorophyl.
    On a serious note:

    Let us not be too quick to jump on the planet hopping bandwagon, there is no way we can 100% confirm that those worlds can sustain life as we know it. Keep in mind that just because something is earth like, doesn't necessarily mean it can sustain life.
    Yes. Earth-like seems to me a questionable term. Having a similar mass to Earth and being in the right space around the sun is still a far way from being a habitable planet. Venus and Marks are earth-like, too.

    We're too far away to even contemplate practical star travel, no technology exist, YET. If advancement were to occur here on earth, I predict this is well within thousands of years in the future. However; the way the world economy is going, with it being on the verge of imploding on itself, many are not even focusing on space exploration.

    I don't think we'll ever even get to the point of star travel, since we're on the verge of nuking ourselves back into the stone age, or worse, out of existence.
    I don't see things that bad. There will be set backs, but I have doubts we will destroy ourselves or nuke ourselves at all.

    My bigger issues are that I am more and more convinced we'll never have FTL travel (not with warp, worm holes or anything), and it is even doubtful we could create a working generation ship with a biosphere that lasts a few decades, centuries or millenia. If we are forever limited to crawling at low percentages of the speed of light, we'll never really get away from here. There will be a vast, unexplored universe full of mysteries and maybe even aliens, but we'll never contact any of them, nor ever see any of this "personally".

    Maybe our best hope is to build probes that can get there after thousands or million of years (but considering the problems of maintainance - it doesn't sound that much easier than builing a sustainable biosphere).

    Think about this - all the wonders of the world, out there, so many things that could be seen, never seen by mankind. Not because we are too stupid and destroyed ourselves, but just because reality doesn't allow it.

    Maybe this is really a sign of how insignificant we truely are - not only is the universe vastly bigger than we can really understand. We won't ever see any of it ourselves. We are even deprived of the significance of an observer. Not only is the universe too big for us. We're not even worth being shown it all.

    Or is it? Maybe there is another perspective. This giant-*** crazy big universe - without it, we couldn't exist. Creator or no creator (I vote for the latter) - one could say all this big thing is just for our benefit. Sure, maybe we don't get to see it, but we might not be possible in any other way...
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    I just want to jump in and say this is a classy thread guys. Keep it up.

    Nice to see this stuff being discussed, when so many of my everyday companions couldn't give a damn. :)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    rayvenwing wrote: »
    Closest Star is Proxima Centuria which is 4.25 LY. so at Light speed it would take us 4 years and 3 or so months to get there.

    And as someone said earlier. unless we find a way to truely break the light barrier and excede light by multiples we would never get anywhere in any real decent length of time.

    Right now for us its like standing on the shore of the ocean and noticing an island out there. We cant reach because we cant build or boat or even swim as the case may be with some sort of sleeper/generation ship

    and apparently it is possible to exceed the speed of light :)
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/second-experiment-confirms-faster-than-light-particles/2011/11/17/gIQAlRlTWN_story.html
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    This is definatly one of the many things the will motvate us to make better and faster technonlogy.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    I wonder if they have a Wal-Mart yet?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    gornman47 wrote:
    It also confirms, somewhat, Roddenberry's theory that there are hundreds if not thousands of earth-like habitable planets out there. The next 50 years is going to be exciting!

    Did he have that idea before or after Carl Sagan?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    gornman47 wrote:
    It also confirms, somewhat, Roddenberry's theory that there are hundreds if not thousands of earth-like habitable planets out there. The next 50 years is going to be exciting!

    Not yet it doesn't. Finding it in the habitable zone is the first step. Next we have to see if it has a moon to stabilize its orbit, a liquid core to produce a magnetic field to protect the planet from solar radiation, an atmosphere that is not toxic, water, and a proper rotation.

    This is like trying to find a new blue Ford Mustang Convertible. If you see a car on a Chevy lot, you can rule it out. The "habiatable zone" would be the Ford dealership but that doesn't mean the first car you see on the lot is the one you want. Finding a planet in the habitable zone doesn't make it habitable; it makes it not automatically not habitable.

    In order for a planet to be considered habitable, A, B, C, D, E, F, G and H must be established. The habitable zone is A. If it fails that, then the rest is moot.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    So far as getting there goes, we already have the technology to get some pretty good speeds out in space, if we're not quite at warp 5 yet.

    Take, for example, the ion drive. This is already in use on some long range satellites. It starts off slow however the constant pressure formed by the drive will continually increase flight speed, especially in the vacuum of space where there is almost no friction to slow it down. Given that the ion drive is capable of continually increasing speed, I wonder what would happen if one of these was used and pushed beyond the speed of light. If I had the resources, I'd launch one into space on a course orbiting the sun and see what happened when it started getting really fast.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    Bort1980 wrote: »
    So far as getting there goes, we already have the technology to get some pretty good speeds out in space, if we're not quite at warp 5 yet.

    Take, for example, the ion drive. This is already in use on some long range satellites. It starts off slow however the constant pressure formed by the drive will continually increase flight speed, especially in the vacuum of space where there is almost no friction to slow it down. Given that the ion drive is capable of continually increasing speed, I wonder what would happen if one of these was used and pushed beyond the speed of light. If I had the resources, I'd launch one into space on a course orbiting the sun and see what happened when it started getting really fast.

    It would only reach a speed equal to the speed of ions leaving the engine. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So it could never go faster than the ions leaving the ship.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    Kepler-22 here I come
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    It would only reach a speed equal to the speed of ions leaving the engine. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So it could never go faster than the ions leaving the ship.

    Of course, you are correct. The output of an ion drive is linked to the power source it uses, with the higher power settings meaning higher speeds. All we would need is some incredible power source, and away we go, lol.

    I wonder if proximity to the sun could improve solar cells/panels. Couple that with a slingshot maneuvre around the sun, and we either have very fast travel, or time travel, if Kirk is to be believed.

    Now that would be entertaining. We attempt to get some ridiculous speed out of these engines and end up rewriting history by accident.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    RAJ_2011 wrote:
    This is definatly one of the many things the will motvate us to make better and faster technonlogy.

    And a positive reason for once, rather than our classic destructive behaviour, with the biggest technological gains coming from warfare.

    Economic crisis or not, I always found it incredibly silly how we focus on our little world, rat racing to acquire things such as weapons and wasting resources in utterly useless exercises of futility such as paying the Kardashians to be stupid wh***s on TV.

    Some might say that things such as interstellar travel are thousands of years away, reality is that we can't say: if somebody told the most brilliant scientist in the 19th century that, in less than 100 years, mankind would be blasting through the sky at the speed of sound he'd have the guy locked in a mental ward straight away.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    It would only reach a speed equal to the speed of ions leaving the engine. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So it could never go faster than the ions leaving the ship.

    This doesn't sound right. Or at least, your conclusion doesn't sound right.
    You can accelerate forever if you have the fuel to do so. The ions leaving the engines always create an equal and opposite reaction. They ions (or the material where you gain your ions from) aboard your ship are accelerated together with the ship, and once they leave the ship, they once again create an action against the ship that creates an equal opposite reaction propelling it further.

    The limitations of the ion engines are:
    • The amount of fuel that you use to gain and propel those ions. ONce that fuel is depleted, you stop acceleration. (But not moving.)
    • The gain in mass as you accelerate as you reach higher speeds closer to the speed of light. The faster you go, the less you will accelerate eventually. (This is not part of Newtonian mechanics, this is the part where Relativity takes over and diverges from Newtons theories). This also prevents you from reaching the speed of light ever.
    If you have infinite time and infinite fuel, you could reach the speed of light. But since you have neither, your speed is considerable more limited.

    As I understand, the advantages of ion engines are that they consume less fuel and are thus more efficient, but they don't achieve the same acceleration as "traditional" rocket fuels do.

    There are additional limitations:
    IF we can make really really fast accelerating ion engines, we still have to deal with the human limitations of how much acceleration we can take. Ideal acceleration would be 1 g, because then the acceleration cause the same amount of force as the Earth's Gravity. Maybe we can take a little more. But much more, we can only survive for brief periods of time.
    I wonder if proximity to the sun could improve solar cells/panels. Couple that with a slingshot maneuvre around the sun, and we either have very fast travel, or time travel, if Kirk is to be believed.
    Kirk is better not to be believed. A slingshot maneuver, however, is a good maneuver. Still, that won't give us speeds close to the speed of light. But it will spare us fuel.
    and apparently it is possible to exceed the speed of light
    Provided we're sufficiently sure that the experiment didn't contain a systematic error (which even repeating it won't reveal.), this may be a positive sign for FTL travel. At least if you were a neutrino.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    Nice post Mustrum, although I cannot believe you are on a Star Trek forum and claim Kirk is not to be believed.

    *Shakes head in dismay*

    What is this universe coming to? Not believe Kirk indeed... :p

    While technically not real time travel, the closer you are to the speed of light, the slower 'time' becomes, so, theoretically, you could go bum around in space travelling really quickly, and when you get back to Earth, your twin brother would have aged more than you have.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    Em \worships JPL and Kepler Space Scope..

    Yes, The Spectrum analysis turned to Computer image is very nice. 600 LY is quite a ways off today
    but tomorrow anything may be Trek able..
    Given the conditions that may be compared to our own here on this Lonely little Third Stone form the sun..
    Was always the Astrometric Grail.

    Today we do use too much fuel escaping orbit.. which makes future discoveries more dependant on space launch and facilities to launch from.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    This doesn't sound right. Or at least, your conclusion doesn't sound right.

    <snip>

    Provided we're sufficiently sure that the experiment didn't contain a systematic error (which even repeating it won't reveal.), this may be a positive sign for FTL travel. At least if you were a neutrino.

    The problem is at a certain point, the amount of thrust will be equal to your current speed. At that point, you can go no faster with that current set up. If the ions are leaving your engine as fast as you are going, they are providing no more trust. You are more or less just dropping them off in space. Mythbusters did an experiment on a similar concept. If forward motion equals rear mothion than speed equals 0. If forward motion equals thrust, then speed gain will be zero. In a vaccum, you can only go as fast as what is shooting out your rear.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    Oh great! Humans... Whay did it have to be Humans to find my little planet. I guess I ought to put out the No Humans sign on the front lawn, and turn on the Orbital defense platforms... :p
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    One now wonders if this star is in the right direction to place within a current STO sector block? Or is it more toward the unmapped regions? It woud be fun to make the subject of a Featured Episode some day. Just for kicks.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2011
    A couple of weeks ago on the discovery science channel they where showing furture ideas of space travel on what engineers/scienectists are experimenting on one man is using plasma.
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