Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why 24 years? Radio travels at the speed of light, not half the speed of light, right?
Roundtrip time.
HAHA! Thanks, sometimes I need a kick in the rear. I was thinking one way.
Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a nearby star
131–140 of 391 posts
Re: Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a nearby star
#132"Habitable" in also relative to our Earthly form of life. There may be other architectures that prefer different temperatures and pressures, perhaps.
Also, from 12 ly away, I'm sure that Sol would appear to have at least 3 habitable planets (Venus, Earth, Mars).
Re: Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a nearby star
#133"just 12 light-years away" I love the "just". I know it's nearby on galactic scales but it's practically about 450,000 Earth years away with current technology :-)
And "just" 24 years over radio if there's anyone there to talk with ;).
To me this sounds feasible.
We already organize space missions over the 20 year mark. Communicating effectively with another civilization could be taken just as seriously and done in an organized and effective manner.
It would take a while to get going but once the sharing starts it would be immensely productive.
Re: Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a nearby star
#134"just 12 light-years away" I love the "just". I know it's nearby on galactic scales but it's practically about 450,000 Earth years away with current technology :-)
I smiled as well but with a slowly but steadily accelerating ship we can reach half the light speed and get there in 50 years. It put things in the realm of "possible" which is amazing.
now do some napkin math on the reaction mass and energy you need to slowly accelerate that much for that long
Re: Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a nearby star
#135"just 12 light-years away" I love the "just". I know it's nearby on galactic scales but it's practically about 450,000 Earth years away with current technology :-)
I think current technology makes no sense when talking about interstellar travel.
I wonder how long it'd take, seen from the perspective of the ship, if we had an engine capable of delivering a constant 1g acceleration.
That's the way we'll want to travel, after all.
Re: Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a nearby star
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Only 12ly away and that one has maybe two habitable planets? That tells me the universe is teaming with potential homes for life. This seems like the birthday problem in statistics [0] - that if you have 30 people, it's likely that two people have the same birthday. However, the problem that could also exist (in our corner of the galaxy) that everyone else has a birthday far away from ours, and nobody else shares a…
The birthday paradox works because you are looking for a pair that has the same birthday, regardless of what date that birthday is. It doesn't work in the habitable planet sense because you would be essentially locking the birthday to a fixed date.
Yes. How many people do you need in a room to be confident that one of them has the same birthday as you?
Re: Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a nearby star
#137"just 12 light-years away" I love the "just". I know it's nearby on galactic scales but it's practically about 450,000 Earth years away with current technology :-)
By way of comparison the entire 'human'species is about that age. += 250-500k years depending on how you measure.
Honestly it's far far far better to focus on reaching superhuman intelligence and AGI and then just creating a Dyson sphere around our sun.
At that point we can try to figure out FTL travel...
Re: Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a nearby star
#138Perhaps habitable planets will be necessary for human migration and colonization, rather than finding aliens.
Re: Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a nearby star
#139"just 12 light-years away" I love the "just". I know it's nearby on galactic scales but it's practically about 450,000 Earth years away with current technology :-)
No, it's 12 years away by radio wave, which means 24 years for a round trip communication.
Physical travel is out of scope, but we could share knowledge in the (extremely) unlikely case that we found intelligent life with radio technology.
Re: Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a nearby star
#140"just 12 light-years away" I love the "just". I know it's nearby on galactic scales but it's practically about 450,000 Earth years away with current technology :-)
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