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

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Fuck. They wouldn't know where to start.

Just take 10bill off of the military and give it to NASA and you'd see special things.

Why do you want to hurt our military and hate our troops? The DoD could use that money to further put into a jet that will never see combat, a 1.45 trillions dollars isn't enough! Maybe 1.46T will do the trick.
 

RocknRola

Member
You aren't wrong. Infact it's more than the overall national budget of most of the world.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

There is another stat haha

Wow! Looking at those numbers, and if you don't count China, the US spent more in their defense budget in 2015 than the rest of the countries of that list combined. With China, the US does lag behind but not by much either... insane.

Nasa would probably be sending people to Europa or something if they had that much money to burn annually :p
 
Imagine if they find a planet that is in the goldilocks zone but also close enough in proximity to a black hole to suffer from Gravitational time dilation.....

Theoretically they could have a civilization thousands of years ahead of ours but a planet that is far younger than ours.

Shit like that just blows my mind.....
 

TyrantII

Member
They should stop these conferences. I mean, who is it even for? Youre making the regular folk less and less excited about space every time you do one of these things.

Imagine if they had only held these kinda of conferences for major things. It would be all over the news for days.

That's not how PR / Marketing works.

You drill a message into "regular folks" skulls or you are ignored and forgotten.
 
That's not how PR / Marketing works.

You drill a message into "regular folks" skulls or you are ignored and forgotten.

How the vast majority of the world view NASA

what-you-thinking-about-i-dunnaspace-stuff-i-guess-thumb.jpg
 

TyrantII

Member
Wow! Looking at those numbers, and if you don't count China, the US spent more in their defense budget in 2015 than the rest of the countries of that list combined. With China, the US does lag behind but not by much either... insane.


Since its tax time, it's probably right to point out that doesn't include interest payments on past military debt as well (what we borrowed to spend and are still paying back).

Factor that in, and $0.50 of every $1.00 you send uncle Sam is going to military or the military industrial Complex. I think NASA gets a buck or two.

It's insanity, especially when budget hawks talk of how bad defiect spending/debt is in one breath and then want to expand military spending in the other.
 

jem0208

Member
They should stop these conferences. I mean, who is it even for? Youre making the regular folk less and less excited about space every time you do one of these things.

Imagine if they had only held these kinda of conferences for major things. It would be all over the news for days.
These conferences aren't for regular people, they're for astrophysicists and other interested people.

It's not NASA's fault the media always hype them up so much. Nowhere in NASA's actual news release are the words "major" or "revelation".

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-host-news-conference-on-discovery-beyond-our-solar-system

Seriously though people, don't get too excited.
 

glaurung

Member
These conferences aren't for regular people, they're for astrophysicists and other interested people.

It's not NASA's fault the media always hype them up so much. Nowhere in NASA's actual news release are the words "major" or "revelation".

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-host-news-conference-on-discovery-beyond-our-solar-system

Seriously though people, don't get too excited.
Maybe Trump's new NASA will start using press release titles like "ABSOLUTELY HYUUGE SPACE ALIENS NEWS X-FILES STUFF YOU WONT BELIEVE IT"?
 

NH Apache

Banned
https://www.twitter.com/DidierQueloz/status/833976887500234754

https://www.twitter.com/DidierQueloz/status/834027647046918145

Astronomy grapevine says this is news about the TRAPPIST-1 system which has 3 earth/venus sized rocky planets in the habitable zone of its star (a cool red dwarf, so bonus points for the references!)

Probable that they've detected (or even characterised) atmospheres on one/some/all of these planets.

http://www.trappist.one/

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/TRAPPIST-1

Freaking awesome! Planets with (potentially habitable) atmospheres!

One of the planets is so close to their sun, 1 year is equivalent to 1.5 earth days.
 
http://www.trappist.one/

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/TRAPPIST-1

Freaking awesome! Planets with (potentially habitable) atmospheres!

One of the planets is so close to their sun, 1 year is equivalent to 1.5 earth days.
Thats cool that its only 40 light years away too. Thats mighty close. Only ten times farther than our closest star that we will never reach in my lifetime :(

At least we can send some signals there and if anything is there to receive and respond to our message we might get a reply in about 80 years... after I'm long dead :(
 
Exciting times. TESS and Webb will be awesome, can't wait for those.

On topic, this will probably be related to the discovery of the best candidate for life outside of our solar system.

Edit: yep that looks like it

Edit 2: holy shit this is a really REALLY good candidate. The first two planets are tidally locked to the star so the probability is lower, but the third one is not and could still be within the habitable orbit. Considering that this is a ultracool dwarf the star will shine, literally, for trillions of years. If there's no life in those planets now, there might still be something in the future.
 

nekkid

It doesn't matter who we are, what matters is our plan.
Me whenever NASA announce a "major press conference":

IgMyx.gif
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
That would have been awesome if it was the same in our solar system...

War of the Worlds for real. Imagine multiple species emerged on these planets independently, and the interplanetary dynamics it could create. Hopefully they'd get along with each other :|
 

fanboi

Banned
War of the Worlds for real. Imagine multiple species emerged on these planets independently, and the interplanetary dynamics it could create. Hopefully they'd get along with each other :|

True.

But if we got past that it would be a tremendous advantage.
 

Caayn

Member
True.

But if we got past that it would be a tremendous advantage.
That's a huge if, seeing how hard it seems to be for us to get along with our own species.

Granted our thoughts and beliefs might have evolved different in a solar system with multiple intelligent species.
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
That's a huge if, seeing how hard it seems to be for us to get along with our own species.

Granted our thoughts and beliefs might have evolved different in a solar system with multiple intelligent species.

I think it could help unify planets, and presumably accelerate development of space technologies. But international conflict could be easily replaced by interplanetary conflict.

Although this is a very human-centric view of things...
 
Interplanetary conflict would be nuts. Space battles would happen for sure. But multiple planets evolving intelligent species independently simultaniously in the same solar system seems pretty improbable. But I could see one species spreading over the other planets and colonizing them and with enough time becoming seperate government entities on each planet.
 

nekkid

It doesn't matter who we are, what matters is our plan.
Interplanetary conflict would be nuts. Space battles would happen for sure. But multiple planets evolving intelligent species independently simultaniously in the same solar system seems pretty improbable. But I could see one species spreading over the other planets and colonizing them and with enough time becoming seperate government entities on each planet.

It increases significantly if you consider one world spreading the seed to others via asteroid impacts etc.
 
Scientists speaking about surveying other worlds always gives me the chills. Too bad none of us is going to live to see them, but the very fact that they have been proven to exist is just so exciting.
Indeed. Its sad that we wont live to see these planets explored and whatnot but I do love that we are here at the begining of their discovery. If we survive as a species long enough to one day reach these other worlds, this will be a very important time in history. Its fun to think about at least.

I figure I have at least a good 30-40 years left and I'm excited about the things we may discover. Its a nice distraction in thought from the mess that is our current reality.
 
For me it's unbelievable we are not yet trying to colonize Mars, and that this will probably even won't happen in my life time...

It's nice we are finding habitable exoplanets, but over the next few thousand years nobody will be able to live there.
 
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