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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

#611

Post by bubersson »

blueprint wrote: post #368
Spare_account wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Based on his previous achievements I feel like he is likely to move the field forward by big steps. And if not him the people after him. I'm not sure if pushing myself into field I don't understand much would help the progress. Scientists do science, not activists.

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

#612

Post by fstephany »

stargazer-3 wrote: post #454
Aardwolf wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, the project was born in Liège University in Belgium.

The name they chose for their programs are quite funny with belgian references: SPECULOOS[0] and TRAPPIST[1].

There are 11 trappist beers in the world (of which 6 are brewed in Belgium). Speculoos is a Dutch/Belgian cookie.

[0]: http://www.speculoos.ulg.ac.be/cms/c_3272698/en/speculoos-po... [1]: http://www.trappist.ulg.ac.be/cms/c_3300885/en/trappist-port...

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

#613

Post by bubersson »

Arizhel wrote: post #441
kristopolous wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may have to be some clever system where you don't take a lot of fuel with you. Imagine a type of particle accumulator and aggregator - call it cosmic flypaper. If you're going say 100 km/s, things seemingly insignificant and rare you may be able to collect a lot of pretty quickly.

It sounds like you're talking about the Bussard Ramjet. It collects interstellar hydrogen gas for use in fusion engines. The problem is that it's unlikely there's enough hydrogen floating around for it to really work.

Are there places that would have high concentrations of floating hydrogen? You would just need to "fly" through those.

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

#614

Post by Snoddas »

callumprentice wrote: post #607

A few months ago, I made a simple WebGL app to compare the sizes of our sun and the planets for my 5 year old daughter who was curious. I updated it today to include the TRAPPIST system and see how it compares to our own solar system. http://callumprentice.github.io/apps/celestial_bodies/index....

Very informative. Nicely done.

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

#615

Post by cmstoken »

callumprentice wrote: post #607

A few months ago, I made a simple WebGL app to compare the sizes of our sun and the planets for my 5 year old daughter who was curious. I updated it today to include the TRAPPIST system and see how it compares to our own solar system. http://callumprentice.github.io/apps/celestial_bodies/index....

Really nice work. Bookmarked!

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

#616

Post by zeroer »

actsasbuffoon wrote: post #114
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)

It would take 37 days at warp 6 (assuming we're using the new warp factors established in The Next Generation). I have no idea how much dilithium crystal would be required though.

Their engines don't consume dilithium. Rather, it's a catalyst to the matter-antimatter reaction.

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

#617

Post by ianai »

perlgeek wrote: post #353
biot wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The upper bound is the age of the universe.

This may sound a bit snarky, but it's actually quite a good boundary. Current estimations for the age of the Universe are around 12 to 14 billion years, which isn't much compared to a trillion year life span of such a star.

Plot twist: It's actually 2 trillion years old. Everything we know of the universe is wrong! (I'd bet I'm not the only one who'd find that a more interesting option.)

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

#618

Post by [deleted] »

npunt wrote: post #594
Dylan16807 wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Still, assuming light speed travel, Firefly's inhabited planets are still a heck of a lot closer, since the crew doesn't seem to noticeably age between the half dozen or so star systems that they visit, and don't appear to have any kind of tech to reversibly[1] halt their metabolisms. Closer than what? This system is significantly smaller than Firefly's. Or do you mean closer than this system is to Earth? Don't wor…

I never realized Firefly was in a super-system. Gravity would rip that thing apart in an instant.

[deleted]

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

#619

Post by flukus »

andreareina wrote: post #608
flukus wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any reason to accelerate to the half way point? Accelerating to .99c is much faster and would use much less fuel. It also wouldn't make the travel time much different, to the outside observers anyway.

If you accelerate beyond the halfway point you're not going to be able to stop in time.

I mean you can stop well before half way. 2 years at 1g will get you to .97c and drastically cut the fuel requirements.

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

#620

Post by irusri »

I cant understand what can we possibly achieve from this type of explorations. NASA spends lot of money each year to excite us but nothing really achieved. Personal thought: Isn't worthy to spend this money for alleviation of poverty in this planet?
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