I knew it.
Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth
451–460 of 754 posts
Re: Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth
#452Uh oh. The "great filter" hypothesis is essentially that the rarity of intelligent life has to be explained by some parameter of the Drake equation, and that whatever the "small" parameter is is either in our past or in our future. If the "great filter" is the rarity of habitable worlds, then clearly we don't need to fear it, since we already found one. But if habitable worlds aren't rare, then it's more likely it li…
The "Transcension Hypothesis" is a possible solution to the Fermi Paradox... http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576511...
Great link, thanks.
Cant help but be reminded of the premise of the Halo games, and the objectives of the alien race.
Re: Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth
#453Wiki says "TRAPPIST-1 is an ultracool dwarf star that is approximately 8% the mass of and 11% the radius of the Sun. It has a temperature of 2550 K and is at least 500 million years old." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1 Too young star for alien life hopes?
I think this is why there is no life on any of the planets. The star is just too young. However, the star could have a life span of 5 trillion years, it is safe to say that life could form on the planets and have plenty of time to develop.
Maybe several times over independently. Hopefully we won't have to speculate long. As Jill Tarter says, "we count one, two, infinity." Still waiting for two, and I hope it happens in my lifetime.
Re: Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth
#454My favourite part of the press release: > 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. > In contrast to our sun, the TRAPPIST-1 star – classified as an ultra-cool dwarf – is so cool that liquid water cou…
And the name of the star is shared with Trappist beer!
A colleague of mine has an insider info that the telescope was named after beer on purpose.
Re: Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth
#455Physicists have got blinders on. Once we solve the gravity problem everything changes. I've been searching for a decade for scientists who can confirm my info but tbh most everyone seems to have abandoned themselves already.
Crackpot alert!
Re: Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth
#456My favourite part of the press release: > 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. > In contrast to our sun, the TRAPPIST-1 star – classified as an ultra-cool dwarf – is so cool that liquid water cou…
Well, in Lexx, there was Fire[0] and Water[1], which shared an atmosphere[2] which could be traversed with balloons.[3]
0) http://lexx.wikia.com/wiki/Fire
1) http://lexx.wikia.com/wiki/Water
Re: Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth
#457Just curious, how is this related to us considering there are ziga-billion-stars/planets not-yet-be-found in the universe, why is this news important?
While the system itself is nothing extraordinary from a detached, theoretical point of view - we are aware that there are many planetary systems in the universe of all sorts and sizes - what makes this news so impressive in my opinion is the thrill of actually witnessing, almost tangibly, such an alien and wonderful system, excitingly different from our own (read the article in detail, fascinating stuff), amplified by the fact that these planets are relatively quite close.
Basically, the system is so peculiar and close to us, now that we have actually discovered it is difficult not to be fascinated by it, even though we know it's nothing to be perplexed with in the grand scheme.
Re: Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. :\
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…
With a round trip parts delivery time OF a generation, and a communications delay of almost a decade (two for duplex), I don't see any reason not to classify such a mission as a short-range 'generation ship' / complete colony effort.
Getting our 'eggs' out of a single cosmic basket is really important, however I think we need to at least take the baby-crawl to establishing an outpost in the asteroid belt. That would be far closer, have far more reasonable communications/parts delays, and if we can actually send up some robots to build things ahead of us, might actually be a good manufacturing base.
Re: Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can someone explain to me why we don't replicate some of these key platforms like the Hubble and James Webb ST? It seems like the major limitation for discovery is getting enough observation time for whatever certain point in the sky that scientists are researching. Why don't we launch a second copy of James Webb?
It looks like the James Webb cost $8.7B to launch. The Hubble $4.7B at launch and $10B through till 2010. So it seems cost is the limiting factor. Replicas might be cheaper, but they wouldn't be kickstarter cheap.
In an attempt to avoid the appearance of politicking, I'd offer that this is not as significant a sum as it may seem initially, viewed in relative terms to... other governmental expenditures.
Re: Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth
#460Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Once we solve the gravity problem I have a feeling I'm going to regret asking, but here we go: what "gravity problem"?
You're familiar with the fact that there is no proper, substantial, accepted model or principle of both gravity and EM that unify them, correct? And we don't knowingly have the ability to build technology that manipulates gravity (trivial interpretations aside). And we also don't know how our actions actually affect the dynamic field that is gravity. Cause the stress-energy tensor says it is dynamic. Or perhaps I'm j…
One sentence in your comment is accurate. I'll let you figure out which one.