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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

#201

Post by ncmncm »

avsteele wrote: post #65
T-A wrote: post #56

There seems to be some confusion about the meaning of "within the habitable zone". From the paper (Introduction and Conclusions, respectively) [1]: The habitability conditions of Proxima b, which orbits within the HZ of the star, have been extensively studied (e.g. Barnes et al. 2017; Ribas et al. 2016; Turbet et al. 2016; Meadows & Barnes 2018). On the other hand, the candidate Proxima d orbits much closer to the st…

Good catch "With the small stellar radius, Proxima d ... equilibrium temperature may reach 360K," NB: Earth's is 255K. Venus 260K, Mars 215K. So this doesn't tell the whole story, but is probably quite hot.

It is certainly tidally locked.

So it has a hot side, a cold side, and an intermediate ring at the terminator.

Probably not very comfortable.

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

#202

Post by spaetzleesser »

gibolt wrote: post #139
spaetzleesser wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Traveling multiple light years is out of the question. You can think about some concepts but it’s simple not doable at this point no matter the budget.

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

#203

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #149
spaetzleesser wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Going to {the Middle East, Europe / Asia, Australia, the New World, interior South America, the North American West) 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 {insert technology} will make a base much easier. There is plenty of work to be done on {current place}. We have to…

Nobody ever believed that America is a super-hostile environment.

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

#204

Post by ethbr0 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #180
ethbr0 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going to {the Middle East, Europe / Asia, Australia, the New World, interior South America, the North American West) 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 {insert technology} will make a base much easier. There is plenty of work to be done on {current place}. We have to…

This is absolutely, objectively, incorrect. You might as well argue that you can build a self-sustaining base on Antarctica. Of course you can't, because Antarctica can't support life. No amount of shouting into a bullhorn about adventure will change that. It might be possible with an absolutely epic effort to airlift soil, nuclear reactors, nuclear and other fuels, machinery for every eventually (including chip fabs…

At the end of the day, profit determines reality. And that's where futurists have always screwed up, because profit funds solutions.

Nobody has colonized Antarctica not because it's impossible, but because it's difficult enough and useless enough that we all agreed on a treaty prohibiting it.

In contrast, we constructed the 63 radars (some with bases) of the DEW line in the late 1950s in under 3 years, with part of the Air Force's budget. Because it was useful.

Establishing a Mars colony is not impossible, it's just extremely hard. Which means expensive. Which means it needs a justification. Which is what I think the knee-jerk is really about.

And is a fair opinion. You may think interplanetary colonization should not be a priority. I think it should.

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

#205

Post by akamoonknight »

ethbr0 wrote: post #144
T-A wrote: post #56

There seems to be some confusion about the meaning of "within the habitable zone". From the paper (Introduction and Conclusions, respectively) [1]: The habitability conditions of Proxima b, which orbits within the HZ of the star, have been extensively studied (e.g. Barnes et al. 2017; Ribas et al. 2016; Turbet et al. 2016; Meadows & Barnes 2018). On the other hand, the candidate Proxima d orbits much closer to the st…

Here's a good collection of details about the entire star system of Proxima Centauri, including its planets. https://www.star-facts.com/proxima-centauri/ Also fascinating, a relative distance vs time graph of close stars. It turns out we'll have closer distances for 6 in the next 10,000 - 50,000 years. https://www.star-facts.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Neares... Somehow I feel like Elon Musk has a print out of tha…

Making an assumption here about Proxima Centauri's own Oort Cloud, but seems like if it's the same size as ours, they'd overlap? Seems like a potentially interesting way for "stuff" to get transferred from one solar system to another.

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

#206

Post by samatman »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #178
samatman wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My education was in chemistry, I've wondered about this topic before. Visible light is actually special after removing the happenstance of DNA-based visual systems from the picture: IR tends to twist or translate bonds (warming) and UV tends to ionize. Visible light being right in the middle is the trick which gives us photosynthesis, and sight, because in both cases a photon can be captured by a photosensitive bond.…

> IR tends to twist or translate bonds (warming) Is this unique to IR?

It's almost definitional of IR in fact, but not quite.

Waves which are relaxed enough to pass through ordinary matter, but interact in interesting ways with metals and other electron clouds, we call radio. Microwaves start out doing this: usefully, they spin water molecules around, hence microwave ovens. What we call microwaves 'bottom out' on not doing so, it's a useful but somewhat artificial category which I would split between radio and IR if you gave me the gavel.

Unlike visible, which is 'visible' because it has distinct properties.

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

#207

Post by spaetzleesser »

oceanplexian wrote: post #114
spaetzleesser wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It sounds like a very chicken or egg problem to me, who's to say that progress in robotics doesn't come from trying to establish a base on Mars? Progress is often times non-linear, I mean here we using computers and communication technology based on Integrated Circuits technology furthered by the Apollo program; say we never went to the moon, computing technology and Moore's law might have been set back a decade or t…

I am not against Mars but I just think it’s premature. Build up robotics for a while and Mars will be much easier. There is no rush to become a multi planetary species. There is no credible threat of a big asteroid or volcano in the next decades. All threats we may be facing are self made.

My favorite moonshot project would be to create robotics that can clean up the environment and handle recycling. Having the technology to pick up dog poop and plastic bags in an efficient and affordable manner or separating recycling items would be a huge technological challenge that would create a ton of spin-off opportunities including a base on Mars. Or clean up the pacific garbage patch with robots.

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

#208

Post by brimble »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #60
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…

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but Musk is just plain wrong when he thinks there is any urgency to Mars exploration (or it's just vicarious arguments because rockets are cool). Basically, the tech you need to make a Mars colony truly self sufficient is something like a compact fusion powerplant. Before we have that, no point in worrying about using Mars as a "backup plan", because if Earth was screwed, Mars would have a…

The Mars backup plan seems kinda dumb to me because Mars is worse as is than all but the very worst post-apocalyptic Earth scenarios.

Just build bunkers here and staff them in shifts. Much cheaper.

Your remaining threats for which Mars would be better than "ruined" Earth are something like a grey goo event, or an asteroid so large that it liquefies much of the crust (killing everyone in all your bunkers). So, a fair bit bigger than the one that killed the Dinosaurs.

I am very interested in watching people try to colonize Mars, but find the "backup for Earth" argument ridiculous, especially if presented as something urgent.

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

#209

Post by spywaregorilla »

ethbr0 wrote: post #194
spywaregorilla wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And so you think you can just mush those two claims together and come to the conclusion that sustaining life on mars must be achievable?

Not must be. Is probably achievable, and is worth attempting, even at the cost of lives. You can argue from either the perspective of futility of attempt (no chance of success) or futility of outcome (success wouldn't be worth it), but I'm pretty convinced both would be weak arguments, both logically and historically.

I'm probably an optimist on Mars travel. I think, with a fuck ton of starships, you could get people living on Mars. But there's some big asterisks on that. You'd more or less have to live in the starships, dependent on shipments from earth, with self sufficiency failing on pretty much every category. Over a very long period, most people would probably die a bit earlier from radiation and dust. Not much would be produced of value. It would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, at least. And interest in it would rapidly decline.

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

#210

Post by BurningFrog »

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…

If you think going to Mars is useless, don't go.

Just don't stand in the way of those who chose to go.

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