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NASA exoplanet discovery conference (7 Earth-sized planets, 3 in habitable zone)

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Was discussing this with my father, a physicist, in the unlikely event there's intelligent life over there and they were receiving our broadcasts then they'd currently be viewing 1977 TV. So MASH, Columbo, All in the family, etc.
 
Sadly, due to the proximity of these planets to their star, they are almost certainly all tidally locked, meaning that one side of the planet constantly faces the star (and is scorched) while the opposite side is in perpetual darkness (and is freezing cold). This kind of environment makes it much harder for life (and certainly complex life) to evolve.

Not necessarily. The planets are pretty tightly packed and their gravitational interactions could prevent tidal locking. Also, a planet with an atmosphere, even if tidally locked, could still cycle that heat around via winds. And finally, even if the first two scenarios are a no, the twilight zone of a tidally locked planet could support life.
 

sneas78

Banned
I would just like to know .. that we are not alone.
When I think about purpose .. all that space and stars and planets .. for what? Empty ?!
 

the_id

Member
So, 40 year old signals from earth are just reaching the system? What shit got broadcasted then? Will intelligent life be able to pick it up?
 

Vitten

Member
As a Belgian I absolutely love the project names are Trappist and Speculoos. Hope the next one is Praline, Frieten or Wafel.


We'll call the 7 planets Orval, Chimay, Rochefort, La Trappe, Westmalle, Achel and Lotus. Sounds pretty good to me.
 
All this doesn't matter unless we find a way to travel faster than light. :/
???

Aping a comment from hacker news:
Accelerating at 1g the 1st half, and decelerating at 1g the 2nd half, the traveler would experience 7.3 years of time. For observers it would take 41.8 years at a max speed of 0.998c
These are the real-world best case numbers. FTL isn't necessary (and probably never going to happen, anyway), but we'd better be ready to pony up some serious $$$, because 25th century space propulsion tech isn't going to invent itself...

google doodle commemorating the discovery

seven-earth-size-exoplanets-discovered-6423181526040576.2-hp2x.gif
:lol, love the photobomb at the end
 
So, 40 year old signals from earth are just reaching the system? What shit got broadcasted then? Will intelligent life be able to pick it up?

It wont reach them or they haven't developed the tech to interpret it... because if it would or if they'd had... we are getting nothing from them (or aren't able to find it).
 

liquidtmd

Banned
It's just such a shame we don't have this in reverse.

Think how fucking bizarre it would be to get insight into an alien Species by receiving transmissions of productions of their acting equivalent of Columbo.

Our first contact meeting - "ZOMG is your Alien Peter Falk alive, we loved that purple blob who went round solving Trappist planet 2b crimes"!!
 

ekim

Member
???

Aping a comment from hacker news:

These are the real-world best case numbers. FTL isn't necessary (and probably never going to happen, anyway), but we'd better be ready to pony up some serious $$$, because 25th century space propulsion tech isn't going to invent itself...


:lol, love the photobomb at the end

I know that time is going faster for people in space but I don't understand nor can I wrap my head around it. It's basically like time travel when I can get somewhere where 1 year for me means 5 years on earth.
 
I know that time is going faster for people in space but I don't understand nor can I wrap my head around it. It's basically like time travel when I can get somewhere where 1 year for me means 5 years on earth.

I know I've read in places that GPS satellites have to have clock adjustment's because of their orbit from Earth. Because they are farther from earth's gravitational force, they experience a lesser amount of time dilation; so their clocks have to be turned back minutely.

I mean if you sit there and try to explain that to someone rationally, it's probably not going to make a ton of sense. I mean, I come from an engineering degree that is purely numbers. This stuff never ceases to blow my mind. Just how little we understand how the universe works in general.
 

the_id

Member
Time dilation is so trippy. Faster you are the slower time gets. I wonder what it's like to be a conscious photon in the quantum world. Everything appears to be static?
 

Paganmoon

Member
???

Aping a comment from hacker news:

These are the real-world best case numbers. FTL isn't necessary (and probably never going to happen, anyway), but we'd better be ready to pony up some serious $$$, because 25th century space propulsion tech isn't going to invent itself...

Now we only need to find a way to accelerate/decelerate at 1g for that given time :)

@TrojanBlade:

There's a difference between something being probable, and finding actual evidence for it. Going by what you say, it's a really dangerous world view in my opinion. You're basicallys aying we don't need evidence, or knowledge, and should just go with gut instict.
 
Time dilation is so trippy. Faster you are the slower time gets. I wonder what it's like to be a conscious photon in the quantum world. Everything appears to be static?

I was always under the impression that time for you remains the same. I always thought it was for the observers.

Like say someone is traveling at the speed of light away from earth for 30 years. To the observers from Earth, it appears they haven't in a stand still of sorts. To them though, they still travel at the speed of light for 30 years in their perspective... Like it's relativity altogether. From the observer time stops, but for the participant time passes normally.
 
I know that time is going faster for people in space but I don't understand nor can I wrap my head around it. It's basically like time travel when I can get somewhere where 1 year for me means 5 years on earth.
I know I've read in places that GPS satellites have to have clock adjustment's because of their orbit from Earth. Because they are farther from earth's gravitational force, they experience a lesser amount of time dilation; so their clocks have to be turned back minutely.

I mean if you sit there and try to explain that to someone rationally, it's probably not going to make a ton of sense. I mean, I come from an engineering degree that is purely numbers. This stuff never ceases to blow my mind. Just how little we understand how the universe works in general.
Satellite clocks actually have to factor in both time speeding up (from general relativity -- gravity effects, aka that one planet in Interstellar) and slowing down (from special relativity -- speed effects, aka what happens to our hypothetical explorers to these new planets). IIRC general relativity "wins" by a factor of 5 or 6 in the satellite case, but GPS wouldn't work without taking both into account.


I don't have a great layman explanation for relativity. The one that comes to mind is: the universe exists in 4D spacetime, and we are always moving through it at a constant "velocity" -- usually just in the "time" dimension. But the universe has a hard speed limit (c, the speed of light), and if you get too close to that speed limit moving through space, your "velocity" through time must slow in proportion.

BUT, this time dilation effect is local -- you (going super fast) perceive time as going slower, but from the outside it would be as if you're living in proportionally slow motion.

Not perfect, but maybe slightly helpful?
 

fanboi

Banned
Is there any upcoming tech for new revolutionary propulsion? And is there any theories how to achieve FTL or jump drives? Or is it just fantasy?
 
Is there any upcoming tech for new revolutionary propulsion? And is there any theories how to achieve FTL or jump drives? Or is it just fantasy?
It's arguably not really "new", but VASIMR (https://arstechnica.com/science/201...revolutionary-rocket-may-be-about-to-pay-off/) looks like it might finally happen, which would be a big step for manned travel within our solar system. But where interstellar travel is concerned, that "big step" is a baby step forward in a marathon.

Aside: since we've been spending a bare minimum on space tech since the 70s, it should come to no one's surprise that all the manned space propulsion plans are (still) built around nuclear power. You get what you pay for, which, after 40+ years, remains: bupkis.

In regards to FTL, warp, jump, wormholes: there are theories, but they are fantastical enough that I'm comfortable calling them "fantasy".
 
Yeah, that makes sense to me.

I also feel that if our galaxy has had any organism with technology equivalent to or greater than ours over the past 3 billion years or so they would have already mapped out the locations of stars and planets with the highest likelihood of forming technology-dependent organisms, so we may already have been on someone's radar in the past. Too bad geology and astronomy act on a rather inaccessible scale of time relative to your average lifespan.

Also if any of these planets do have the elements to sustain life, even sending an unmanned craft to one of them could probably kick-start the process on that planet either way, if any small amount of earth bacteria or whatever make it from the shuttle to the planet which could be interesting in its own way.
 

liquidtmd

Banned
How will we know if life is there? If there's no way of finding that out without going there then whats the point

Whoopiedoo

So much of our daily life is spent online reading about events in places you will never realistically visit.

I've never visited CERN but I can appreciate the scientific discoveries from it.

I've never visited the ISS but I can submerge myself in studies conducted up there.

I still want to read about them to broaden my understanding of life. Saying 'whats the point, I'll never go' is incredibly narrow a view.
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
Is there any upcoming tech for new revolutionary propulsion? And is there any theories how to achieve FTL or jump drives? Or is it just fantasy?

There was that emdrive which would be a substantial boost in theory, but it's very up-in-the-air - I'm not sure if it's been discredited yet, but it could well be with more experimentation. It wouldn't be an ftl drive mind you, but it would be a big improvement.
 
So much of our daily life is spent online reading about events in places you will never realistically visit.

I've never visited CERN but I can appreciate the scientific discoveries from it.

I've never visited the ISS but I can submerge myself in studies conducted up there.

I still want to read about them to broaden my understanding of life. Saying 'whats the point, I'll never go' is incredibly narrow a view.
No, Im saying if we cant find out if there is in fact life on it, then whats the point.

There are probably trillions of earthlike planets in the goldlock zone out there.
 

jerry113

Banned
No, Im saying if we cant find out if there is in fact life on it, then whats the point.

There are probably trillions of earthlike planets in the goldlock zone out there.

At least we know where to begin looking. maybe one day we'll send a probe there. Traveling at 90% the speed of light, a probe could reach there in under a century.

And hey, with the James Web Space Telescope next year, we can at least learn its major atmospheric chemical content to get a better idea of its potential for harboring life. It would be promising if one of these planets turn out to have an atmospheric makeup similar to that of Earth's.
 
At least we know where to begin looking. maybe one day we'll send a probe there. Traveling at 90% the speed of light, a probe could reach there in under a century.

And hey, with the James Web Space Telescope next year, we can at least learn its major atmospheric chemical content to get a better idea of its potential for harboring life. It would be promising if one of these planets turn out to have an atmospheric makeup similar to that of Earth's.

Will that telescope be able to tell if humans can breathe on the planet? That would be ace
 

Xe4

Banned
Is there any upcoming tech for new revolutionary propulsion? And is there any theories how to achieve FTL or jump drives? Or is it just fantasy?

Upcoming tech? Nope. There are plenty of ways to achieve velocities near the speed of light without breaking any physics, but all of them are huge engineering challenges that won't be viable for quite a while. There's some groundbreaking upcoming propulsion technology in the next 50 years with plasma and stuff, but none of it could really be used to travel beyond the solar system.

As for FTL travel, there are some very theoretical ideas which may or may not have a basis in reality which can achieve travel between distances at which it would take light farther to travel. One is to create a spacetime bridge (a wormhole), and send information or matter through it. Another is to manipulate the Einstein equations so that a sub-luminal ship could bend spacetime to act like it is moving FTL.

Instead of going into detail, I'll recommend a few videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94ed4v_T6YM&ab_channel=PBSSpaceTime
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzZGPCyrpSU
 

WaterAstro

Member
There's no way they can figure out if the planet is habitable just by it being the right size and in the Golden Zone.

The Earth is a miracle with millions of factors that went into its creation.

There's no way we can know until we get there.
 

eot

Banned
It wont reach them or they haven't developed the tech to interpret it... because if it would or if they'd had... we are getting nothing from them (or aren't able to find it).
It won't be detectable. There are limits on how weak signals you can detect due to photon shot noise. At 40 ly the signal is going to be 10^36 times weaker. This means that unless you build a planet sized antenna (or larger, probably), the signal is so weak that it would never register (by that I mean it physically wouldn't deposit any energy into the antenna).
 
There's no way they can figure out if the planet is habitable just by it being the right size and in the Golden Zone.

The Earth is a miracle with millions of factors that went into its creation.

There's no way we can know until we get there.

Not exactly true.

When the James Webb Telescope launches we will be able to read atmospheric makeup and conditions to a higher degree than any instrument we've had, hence we would be able to better determine whether it is habitable.

For instance we could even potentially tell if their are gasses in the atmosphere that are the result of biological activity.
 
As already mentioned, the faster you go the flatter the universe appears, so it wouldn't take you the full 40 years to get there even going less than the speed of light.

Apparently going close to the speed of light it'd take only 28 years to get to the Andromeda galaxy. Carl Sagan can explain it better than me.
I love Carl Sagan. So the photons of light that reach us from Andromeda are only 28 years old even though they took 2.5 million years to get here. Whoa.
 

efyu_lemonardo

May I have a cookie?
I know I'm late to the party but HOLY FUCK
from NASA:
In contrast to our sun, the TRAPPIST-1 star – classified as an ultra-cool dwarf – is so cool that liquid water could survive on planets orbiting very close to it, closer than is possible on planets in our solar system. All seven of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary orbits are closer to their host star than Mercury is to our sun. The planets also are very close to each other. If a person was standing on one of the planet’s surface, they could gaze up and potentially see geological features or clouds of neighboring worlds, which would sometimes appear larger than the moon in Earth's sky.
 

curls

Wake up Sheeple, your boring insistence that Obama is not a lizardman from Atlantis is wearing on my patience 💤
Is there any upcoming tech for new revolutionary propulsion? And is there any theories how to achieve FTL or jump drives? Or is it just fantasy?

Nikolai A. Kozyrev - Torsion Fields

Burkhard Heim - Heim Theory

Anatoly Akimov and Gennady Shipov
 
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