Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wolf 1069B: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a nearby, low-mass star

arxiv.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 132 posts

Re: Wolf 1069B: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a nearby, low-mass star

#71

Post by loxias »

fullstackchris wrote: post #66
loxias wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the course of the past 2 decades we've gone from "perhaps some day we'll find extra solar planets" to "most if not all stars have planets". JWST's already found water. At this point it's no longer a matter of if but when extrasolar life will be confirmed, and with which instrument. Might be JWST, might be WFIRST, might be HabEx.

> At this point it's no longer a matter of if but when extrasolar life will be confirmed There is absolutely no data to confirm this, simply because no matter what equations or variables you throw around, we have no way of knowing the probability of life. We have only earth, and we still don't fully understand how that all worked out. We do not know what (or if!) any filter is present that prevents complex life. From…

I never claimed to have proof, just that it's true. ;-)

Personally, it "feels true" that life exists as a undeniable consequence of statistical thermodynamics (see: http://www.englandlab.com/uploads/7/8/0/3/7803054/2013jcpsre... referenced in https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-theory-o...).

But I know I'm an engineer, not a scientist or mathematician. I'm perfectly comfortable with things being true even sans iron clad rigorous proof. If you limit your worldview to only that which has been rigorously proven you miss out on a lot of necessary and interesting truths, I think.

Re: Wolf 1069B: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a nearby, low-mass star

#72

Post by TMWNN »

zapdrive wrote: post #12
cantwaitzz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Followed by an ALM movement a hundred years later. Aliens will rise up complaining of how they were treated in the mines by no other than the earthling colonists.

Which begs a question. If the Africans colonized Europe first, would they eventually give them equal rights?

Almost certainly not.

The entire concept of equality, and civil rights for all, is a creation of the Wester European Enlightenment with no precedent or counterpart elsewhere.

To put another way, slavery has been present in every human society throughout recorded history. The only ones to have ended it across the board are a) the Roman Empire under Christianity, and b) the UK, France, US, and Brazil (roughly in that order) in the 19th century.

Re: Wolf 1069B: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a nearby, low-mass star

#73

Post by winReInstall »

moloch-hai wrote: post #40

None of these "habitable" planets is really plausibly habitable. In particular, orbiting so close, they are all tidally locked 1:1 to their star, presenting always the same face. If they have any water, it is frozen on the dark side. But they might have no water anyway because they (might!) have no magnetic field to fend off the solar wind that would take away all their hydrogen, as happened to Venus. Earth has its b…

Habitable also needs a saturn class planet outside, defending against meteorites and comets. Else you can have life on a planet, but it gets "reset" every nthousand years. Lucky us, there have only been 7 to 20 of these events so far.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event

Re: Wolf 1069B: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a nearby, low-mass star

#74

Post by maxamillion2020 »

moloch-hai wrote: post #40

None of these "habitable" planets is really plausibly habitable. In particular, orbiting so close, they are all tidally locked 1:1 to their star, presenting always the same face. If they have any water, it is frozen on the dark side. But they might have no water anyway because they (might!) have no magnetic field to fend off the solar wind that would take away all their hydrogen, as happened to Venus. Earth has its b…

Yes, but our planet detecting tools can only currently detect planets that are 1. close to their stars and 2. smallish, so that self-selects for tidally locked planets.

Re: Wolf 1069B: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a nearby, low-mass star

#75

Post by sammalloy »

loxias wrote: post #71
fullstackchris wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At this point it's no longer a matter of if but when extrasolar life will be confirmed There is absolutely no data to confirm this, simply because no matter what equations or variables you throw around, we have no way of knowing the probability of life. We have only earth, and we still don't fully understand how that all worked out. We do not know what (or if!) any filter is present that prevents complex life. From…

I never claimed to have proof, just that it's true. ;-) Personally, it "feels true" that life exists as a undeniable consequence of statistical thermodynamics (see: http://www.englandlab.com/uploads/7/8/0/3/7803054/2013jcpsre... referenced in https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-theory-o... ). But I know I'm an engineer, not a scientist or mathematician. I'm perfectly comfortable with things being true…

I always go back to people like Drake and Shostak. They seem pretty convinced that "they" are out there, but the problem is that there’s no known way to communicate with them due to distance and time. If there’s a way to solve this problem, please let me know. Sagan and others seemed to think that if we could communicate (a very big if), then we could exchange our knowledge, but how exactly could you do that? The problems appear insurmountable.

Re: Wolf 1069B: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a nearby, low-mass star

#76

Post by Insanity »

sph wrote: post #59
vkou wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're likely never to meet or hear from them even if they were a mere 5 light-years. It's easier for Michael Jordan to jump to the Moon, than for man to travel to the nearest star.

Weird popsci analogy. Travel to the nearest star takes a very long time. Michael Jordan can train for thousands of years and will never leave atmosphere with his jump.

Agree it is odd, but I guess they mean through successive jumps always starting from the previous height. (Like jumping up a large staircase).

Re: Wolf 1069B: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a nearby, low-mass star

#77

Post by chmod775 »

sammalloy wrote: post #75
loxias wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never claimed to have proof, just that it's true. ;-) Personally, it "feels true" that life exists as a undeniable consequence of statistical thermodynamics (see: http://www.englandlab.com/uploads/7/8/0/3/7803054/2013jcpsre... referenced in https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-theory-o... ). But I know I'm an engineer, not a scientist or mathematician. I'm perfectly comfortable with things being true…

I always go back to people like Drake and Shostak. They seem pretty convinced that "they" are out there, but the problem is that there’s no known way to communicate with them due to distance and time. If there’s a way to solve this problem, please let me know. Sagan and others seemed to think that if we could communicate (a very big if), then we could exchange our knowledge, but how exactly could you do that? The pro…

Humanity has undertaken massive projects that took hundreds of years before (~2,000 years for all of the great wall of China).

As long as they're less than a few thousands light years out, I don't think that communication would be impossible.

Re: Wolf 1069B: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a nearby, low-mass star

#78

Post by sammalloy »

chmod775 wrote: post #77
sammalloy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always go back to people like Drake and Shostak. They seem pretty convinced that "they" are out there, but the problem is that there’s no known way to communicate with them due to distance and time. If there’s a way to solve this problem, please let me know. Sagan and others seemed to think that if we could communicate (a very big if), then we could exchange our knowledge, but how exactly could you do that? The pro…

Humanity has undertaken massive projects that took hundreds of years before (~2,000 years for all of the great wall of China). As long as they're less than a few thousands light years out, I don't think that communication would be impossible.

I’m with you. But is it reasonable to assume that we can understand each other and share knowledge between the stars? From what I understand, it’s extremely unlikely. After all, we can barely communicate with species other than our own.

Re: Wolf 1069B: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a nearby, low-mass star

#79

Post by pantalaimon »

moloch-hai wrote: post #40

None of these "habitable" planets is really plausibly habitable. In particular, orbiting so close, they are all tidally locked 1:1 to their star, presenting always the same face. If they have any water, it is frozen on the dark side. But they might have no water anyway because they (might!) have no magnetic field to fend off the solar wind that would take away all their hydrogen, as happened to Venus. Earth has its b…

> So actually-habitable planets must be much, much rarer, among those announced, than astronomy departments' PR crew would have us think

That’s not the conclusion you can draw from that.

With the methods we currently have we can only really spot exoplanets if they are very close to their star and also reasonably big in relation to the star.

That means super-earths close to red dwarfs.

There are very likely many more types of planets, they are just much harder to see from afar.

Re: Wolf 1069B: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a nearby, low-mass star

#80

Post by rsynnott »

zaroth wrote: post #22
andrewstuart wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty sure the safest bet is to send the colony ships out at relativistic speeds, back to earth 50 million years in the future.

Why have I never heard this? It’s actually brilliant and almost too simple.

This definitely shows up in sci-fi. Example (where it's done accidentally): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_World_Out_of_Time
Post reply on HN