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Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth

nature.com

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Re: Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth

#361

Post by sputknick »

vkou wrote: post #288
Someone1234 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Particularly in Voyager. They were either running extremely low early in the show or had a virtually infinite supply later in the show. No explanation given. Which is particularly troublesome given the plot of the Equinox episodes. Since on that ship they were harvesting creates to extend their dilithium crystal supply allowing them to travel faster/less efficiently. But even throughout those episodes they never disc…

Voyager spent most of the first season looking for deuterium, so that they could keep the ship moving forward. Presumably, at some point around episode ~15, someone in either engineering, or the writing team realized that it is the third most abundant element in the universe.

It's been a long time since I laughed out loud at an HN comment! Well played. Thank you for that.

Re: Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth

#362

Post by narag »

DanBC wrote: post #44
e0m wrote: post #33

To get a spacecraft there it would take: 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 If you had a near perfect hydrogen -> helium fusion engine, it'd take about 6 million tons of fuel (about the mass of the Pyramids of Egypt or 2,000 Saturn V rockets)

How much fuel would it take to get 6 million tons of fuel off Earth into the interstellar ship?

Better off Enceladus. A ship that size probably would be built in space.

Re: Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth

#363

Post by roninb »

DougWebb wrote: post #272
dmreedy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess J.J. Abrams is somewhat forgiven for this, then: http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/startrek/images/2/29/Vul... [edited for direct .jpg]

I always thought that Firefly's scenario of a bunch of Earth-like worlds in close enough proximity to have regular trading ships flying between them was unrealistic. Now, not so much. This system even fits in with the "Abandon Earth en-mass, move to new set of worlds" backstory. So, what did J.J. know, and when did he know it? And for that matter, how did he know?

Just making sure, but I hope you know that JJ Abrams had literally absolutely nothing to do with Firefly and wasn't even tangentially related to its creation nor production.

Also, I'm relatively positive that JJ (in the sci-fi works he actually, well, worked on), himself, knew nothing (see Armageddon for sources) and that his script supervisors dealt with any discrepancies with reality JJ had.

Re: Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth

#364

Post by bcaulfield »

dmreedy wrote: post #70
bcaulfield wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, basically, this is cooler than just about any world that's been depicted in sci-fi.

I guess J.J. Abrams is somewhat forgiven for this, then: http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/startrek/images/2/29/Vul... [edited for direct .jpg]

Except bigger, with multiple planets in the sky at once.

Re: Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth

#365

Post by Symmetry »

colordrops wrote: post #174
RangerScience wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Continues to be...? Outside of human action, what's the vector?

powerful meteor strikes spreading debris out of orbit.

And the debris isn't heated enough to be sterilized.

Re: Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth

#367

Post by Spare_account »

blueprint wrote: post #338
Balgair wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The engineering issues are really tough, though surmountable. Currently, we just can't engineer the parts that will last that long in hard vacuum. Mostly because we can't test in that environment easily. Also, what do you do when all the light bulbs have burned out or gone haywire, what does that fault-tree look like for the billion and one parts on the craft? For a short journey of ~7 years, it's not a very big deal…

Yeah I'm to be honest just trying to awaken people to the priority being that we need to establish a self-sufficient colony somewhere other than Earth.

Elon Musk is working on that.

http://www.spacex.com/mars

Re: Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth

#368

Post by blueprint »

Spare_account wrote: post #367
blueprint wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm to be honest just trying to awaken people to the priority being that we need to establish a self-sufficient colony somewhere other than Earth.

Elon Musk is working on that. http://www.spacex.com/mars

And you're certain enough that he's going to be able to do it in time and that he's doing it properly enough that you don't have to do anything about it. And you'll continue to go about doing the exact same things. Got it.

Re: Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth

#369

Post by emmelaich »

blueprint wrote: post #72
kcorbitt wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That actually sounds... more plausible than I would have expected. Like, doable with technology I can imagine being within reach in the next 50 years even if we don't achieve any currently-unforseen breakthroughs.

Which begs the question, why haven't we at least even tried to have done anything like this already? Do we really need to repeatedly spend comparable amounts of money on yet another dramatic TV special about humans traveling to Mars, as narrated by a favored celebrity? We really are running out of time. And it almost seems like it's pre-determined to happen. :\

How about http://www.mars-one.com/ ?

Re: Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth

#370

Post by logfromblammo »

idbehold wrote: post #257
logfromblammo wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not depressing. It gives us a moral imperative to transplant Earth-origin life onto every somewhat concentrated mass that we can reach. Then we can wait a few billion years, and the universe will likely have generated a superior successor species which can then re-seed over everything we had previously tilled, and then some. And they'll all be rubber-forehead aliens to one another, because they'll be billionth…

> It gives us a moral imperative to transplant Earth-origin life onto every somewhat concentrated mass that we can reach. And in the very likely scenario that we are never able to "reach" outside our solar system... Then what?

Then we will either be literally extinct or at least economically extinct--permanently unable to recover space-launch technology. Then Earth has to gin up another dominant species capable of reaching the stars with whatever time it may have remaining.

We already have the technology to reach outside the solar system. It launched in 1977.

We will have the capability to transplant microorganisms to extrasolar planets long before moving humans that may have 100kg or more to one. Which is good, because it may take a while for the algae to get established anyway. And if for some reason higher species never show up, that celestial object won't have to overcome the steep initial hurdle of abiogenesis.

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