Earth-sized exoplanet ‘habitable zone’ • Hacker News Board

Re: Earth-sized exoplanet ‘habitable zone’

#51

Post by femiagbabiaka » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #47

madrox wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should it ever become practical to do so, the reasons for doing so will look very similar to the reasons Europeans colonized America. The thing about densely populated environments is it requires lots of governance, and populations have a habit of increasing exponentially, which would be difficult for artificial environments to keep up with indefinitely. When you're on the frontier, you have a lot more freedom.

How so? You've already become adept at living in space, working in space, and building things in space out of materials you found in space or else it wouldn't be practical at all to travel to a new star system anyway. At that point, just build new space habitats.

Unfortunately, we can't even build enough housing for humans on our current planet.

Re: Earth-sized exoplanet ‘habitable zone’

#52

Post by pharke » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

fullstop wrote: post #25

ppeetteerr wrote: post #16

I've been pondering this for a while: once we have artificial gravity in space (from rotation, for instance), would we ever want to shackle ourselves to the gravity of a foreign planet? It would be so much easier just to create the ideal environment in a large, rotating cylinder instead of having adjust a planet's environment to our needs. Take this new discovery for instance. Imagine that this planet is 400m years y…

You can step outside without being in a vacuum. Have you read the Expanse books? They kind of touch on this subject.

Maybe they meant more of an O'Neill Cylinder, in which case you can step 'outside' onto the inner surface of the cylinder and not be in vacuum. Space habitats also have advantages over planets in that they're easier to move, they can be designed to not have adverse conditions like freezing cold, extreme heat and dangerous weather and you can build more of them.

If you step outside of Earth's atmosphere you're in the same vacuum, it's just a bigger step.

Re: Earth-sized exoplanet ‘habitable zone’

#53

Post by wongarsu » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

gwbas1c wrote: post #28

giarc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably best to say "unlikely to contain multicellular life" or maybe even complex life. As we know from here on Earth, microorganisms exist in almost every extreme location on Earth.

Given how fast the human race evolved (compared to how old the earth and life is,) I wouldn't make any assumptions about multicellular life.

However compared to how fast single-celled life formed it took a really long time for multicellular life to occur.

Re: Earth-sized exoplanet ‘habitable zone’

#54

Post by tejtm » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

sukilot wrote: post #27

kempbellt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a lot of fascinating information in one comment. Also fun to note that you mentioned "mean distance" and not just "distance" from the Sun because the Earth's orbit isn't perfectly circular. Thanks for the explanation.

Many people say distance when they mean distance.

mean people quibble over a millionth of the distance

Re: Earth-sized exoplanet ‘habitable zone’

#55

Post by botto » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

bazeblackwood wrote: post #46

VonBraunsGhost wrote: post #44

Downvote me to oblivion, but riddle me this Neil DeGrasse Tyson. If the Earth is an 'oblate spheroid' (it used to be a perfect sphere, you've seen the pics, right?) with a roughly 25,000 mile circumference, then why do all the curvature calculations fail? The rate of curve on a sphere that size is 8" x the number of miles squared and modern optics have completely debunked that. We can see too far. There is no curve.…

Wow, don't mind me, I've just never seen one of you people in the wild.

Any way we can capture one of these beings and study them, I'd love to understand how the brain works

Re: Earth-sized exoplanet ‘habitable zone’

#56

Post by nkrisc » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 9:03 PM UTC

kirubakaran wrote: post #43

jcims wrote: post #4

> Astronomers have discovered a world only a little bit bigger than Earth, whirling around a bright star about 31 parsecs from our planet. Parsec is one of those units that is difficult to remember if you just look at the conversion (1 parsec = 3.26 light years). If you remember how it's defined, however, it somehow becomes easier (for me anyway). One parsec is the distance at which one astronomical unit (AU, mean di…

I just imagine 337453805774280 football fields end-to-end when I want to visualize a parsec

Finally, a measure that speaks to me, as an American.

Re: Earth-sized exoplanet ‘habitable zone’

#57

Post by VonBraunsGhost » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

botto wrote: post #55

bazeblackwood wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, don't mind me, I've just never seen one of you people in the wild.

Any way we can capture one of these beings and study them, I'd love to understand how the brain works

Typical NASA fanboy response. Ad-hominem, no substance.

Refute the point. You can't. No curve = no sphere

Re: Earth-sized exoplanet ‘habitable zone’

#58

Post by duxup » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #47

madrox wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should it ever become practical to do so, the reasons for doing so will look very similar to the reasons Europeans colonized America. The thing about densely populated environments is it requires lots of governance, and populations have a habit of increasing exponentially, which would be difficult for artificial environments to keep up with indefinitely. When you're on the frontier, you have a lot more freedom.

How so? You've already become adept at living in space, working in space, and building things in space out of materials you found in space or else it wouldn't be practical at all to travel to a new star system anyway. At that point, just build new space habitats.

Adept maybe but that doesn't mean that living in space wouldn't involve compromises that people would rather not make / have to make on a nice big habitable planet.

Perhaps I'm wondering away from the initial proposal but think there would be some compromises that make life on a planet more desirable.

Re: Earth-sized exoplanet ‘habitable zone’

#59

Post by clSTophEjUdRanu » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 9:10 PM UTC

kirubakaran wrote: post #43

jcims wrote: post #4

> Astronomers have discovered a world only a little bit bigger than Earth, whirling around a bright star about 31 parsecs from our planet. Parsec is one of those units that is difficult to remember if you just look at the conversion (1 parsec = 3.26 light years). If you remember how it's defined, however, it somehow becomes easier (for me anyway). One parsec is the distance at which one astronomical unit (AU, mean di…

I just imagine 337453805774280 football fields end-to-end when I want to visualize a parsec

I imagine 18131846280409076 George Smoots standing on top one another.

Re: Earth-sized exoplanet ‘habitable zone’

#60

Post by ChrisClark » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 9:10 PM UTC

VonBraunsGhost wrote: post #50

bazeblackwood wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, don't mind me, I've just never seen one of you people in the wild.

You can direct the 'you people' at yourself. I once believed in the pseudo-science promoted as truth, then I took some time to educate myself. You should do the same.

Then you obviously can't even educate yourself correctly. I'd recommend starting over and trying again. ;)