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Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun’s closest star

nature.com

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Re: Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun’s closest star

#131

Post by grishka »

HWR_14 wrote: post #122
psd1 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, worse, the young will never get any power because the old will not relinquish control. Then you have the "surfeit of princes" problem. This isn't just grand political power: imagine being unable to progress in your career because geriatrics above you aren't retiring. That's just one possible secondary effect. We could enumerate many others.

Oh yes. That's a very clear concern. I'm reacting to the "people who decline will he like antivaxers" comment. But it seems far more likely people will be priced out as opposed to voluntarily refuse treatment.

This logic is flawed. It would be much more economically sensible to just rejuvenate everyone regularly instead of doing what we do today — try, and eventually fail, to manage all the conditions related to old age. Since aging affects literally everyone, this huge scale would drive the cost of that intervention down to pennies.

Just to be clear: I'm not from the US, we do have not a very good but nevertheless somewhat working public health system over here.

Re: Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun’s closest star

#132

Post by narag »

NeoTar wrote: post #15

Another point for anyone considering whether we should send a space-probe there... The current fastest man-man object is the Helios 2 space-probe, reaching something like 25 000 kilometres per hour. Proxima Centauri is 1.3020 parsecs away from Earth. So, just diving one by the other, we'd looking at something like 18 000 years as a rough order of magnitude for sending something from Earth to Proxima Centauri. You'd b…

Another point for anyone considering whether we should send a space-probe there...

We should and do send probes anywhere that's practical. The question is more like when it will be practical to build star probes.

The current fastest man-man object is the...

The current fastest man-made object wasn't intended to reach the stars.

On the other hand, there are many challenges that make more sense to undertake as previous steps to develop the needed technology.

Re: Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun’s closest star

#134

Post by grishka »

throw1234651234 wrote: post #90
grishka wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, I believe that any form of mind upload or consciousness transfer is a much harder problem than both rejuvenation and interstellar spaceflight. Looking at current aging research, there's a good possibility we'll see rejuvenation in the next decade or two and it'll profoundly change our society. In 20 years, everyone will be looking 25 years old and pointing at frail people with wrinkly faces and laughing, sam…

That's insane optimism to me. We don't even know how to get a nail to re-attach to a nail bed. We can't put some crystals on a tooth. We can't create a single hair follicle. We have zero non-surgical ways to repair arteries. Etc, etc, etc. We have made zero progress in anti-aging other than controlling blood pressure and identifying harmful chemicals in an environment. We ARE good at extreme, surgical and or heavy me…

We're now capable of programming cells to produce arbitrary proteins at will, how cool is that?

Also please do look through the playlist in a sibling comment. Michael Levin's research is truly badass. He has grown tadpoles with an extra working eye on the back, and recently he has regrown an amputated leg on a frog.

There's an astonishing amount of untapped possibilities in biology that are opening up only now as we finally have the right tools.

Re: Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun’s closest star

#136

Post by eternalban »

samatman wrote: post #97
politician wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is hopeful negativism. - They don't need fusion. A StarShip can deposit hundreds of solar panels and put them on the ground. No, dust isn't an issue because they'll bring a roomba. No, this isn't a joke, NASA martian probes' solar panels were cleaned by a light Martian breeze. - They will be able to become self-sufficient rapidly. They're not going to send 1M tons of cargo to Mars without a deployment plan. Spac…

Mars has dust storms which last months or years, it has no ionosphere, and that dust contains enough perchlorates to poison anything we could eat, including us. Ok, that sentence went somewhere odd at the end but, it's true. A large asteroid has only one of these problems, by virtue of not coming with any atmosphere, ionic or otherwise. I kinda hope Elon is bluffing and actually plans to head to the Belt. I've pencil…

What's the story on navigating in the belt? Approach specific target from above or reasonably safe to traverse it and explore?

Re: Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun’s closest star

#137

Post by dmarchuk »

NeoTar wrote: post #15

Another point for anyone considering whether we should send a space-probe there... The current fastest man-man object is the Helios 2 space-probe, reaching something like 25 000 kilometres per hour. Proxima Centauri is 1.3020 parsecs away from Earth. So, just diving one by the other, we'd looking at something like 18 000 years as a rough order of magnitude for sending something from Earth to Proxima Centauri. You'd b…

Isn't Parker Solar Probe much faster than that? It's supposed to be going hundreds of thousands of km/h. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe

Re: Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun’s closest star

#138

Post by natechols »

rbanffy wrote: post #49
rmbyrro wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exciting stuff indeed. Imagine a year-4,000 spaceship reaching Centauri before another spaceship dispatched 1,000 years before it? For the cynical or pessimists: I'm not optimistic about humanity reaching year-4,000, I'm just possibilistic about it (as in the philosophical meaning [1]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actualism#:~:text=possibilism,...

This is more or less the plot of a story by Brazilian science fiction writer Roberto Luiz Calife.

And the story "Far Centaurus" by A.E. Van Vogt.

Re: Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun’s closest star

#139

Post by gibolt »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #64
uwuemu wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A probe based on nuclear pulse propulsion could do it in around 50 years, with today's technology. It's not that we can't do it fast (within one average human lifespan), it's that the project would be very expensive and something like Nasa has a relatively tight budget. I mean we, as humanity, have to have an eccentric billionaire start a Martian fire (SpaceX Starship) under our lazy asses to even start to think abou…

Going to Mars seems pretty useless to me at this time. It’s a super hostile environment and we don’t have the technology yet to have a self sustaining base there. Give it a few decades and progress in robotics will make a Mars base much easier. There is plenty of work to be done on Earth. We have to solve clean energy production and in general reduce pollution. These are massive technological challenges that deserve…

Do you expect traveling multiple light years to an alien world to be easier or less hostile? You have to start somewhere, and the selection is pretty thin.

Re: Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun’s closest star

#140

Post by HWR_14 »

grishka wrote: post #131
HWR_14 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes. That's a very clear concern. I'm reacting to the "people who decline will he like antivaxers" comment. But it seems far more likely people will be priced out as opposed to voluntarily refuse treatment.

This logic is flawed. It would be much more economically sensible to just rejuvenate everyone regularly instead of doing what we do today — try, and eventually fail, to manage all the conditions related to old age. Since aging affects literally everyone, this huge scale would drive the cost of that intervention down to pennies. Just to be clear: I'm not from the US, we do have not a very good but nevertheless somewha…

> It would be much more economically sensible to just rejuvenate everyone regularly instead of doing what we do today — try, and eventually fail, to manage all the conditions related to old age.

In the US, we just will do neither for the majority of Americans. If you're too poor to afford rejuvenation, you'll be too poor to afford other treatments. And you'll just die.

Sure the cost of each treatment might be pennies (although it probably will cost a lot and not have those economies of scale) but total profit is not maximized by a smaller markup. Better to get Gates/Bezos/Musk/other billionaires to give you 90% of their fortunes.

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