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First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star

bbc.com

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Re: First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star

#61

Post by JMKH42 »

slfnflctd wrote: post #26
quaintdev wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we design a probe that travels at speed of light it would reach there in 48 years and it would send back what it's seen after another 48 years. It would take multiple generations of scientists to work on this project. The longest we have worked on, are Voyager projects. Can we expect that level of commitments from our governments or corporations? Voyager became successful because people could see distant futures.…

> Can we expect that level of commitments from our governments or corporations? Clearly, right now we cannot. This is one of the worst obstacles to progress in these areas that I see, and I don't see any obvious way to fix it. The situation we're currently in would've been utterly unfathomable to me 30 years ago. I have lost a great deal of the hope and optimism I held in the past. Interstellar exploration is but one…

Short term thinking isn't why we are suffering. We are suffering because there are no promising avenues to pursue.

If you think of one, bring it up.

Re: First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star

#62

Post by cadamsdotcom »

dingaling wrote: post #49
andrewflnr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. We haven't really figured out how to do a good government that lasts more than 200 years. Maybe unless you think monarchy is good, in which case I still don't want to share a spaceship with you.

Tynwald, the Isle of Man's parliament, has operated continuously for over 1000 years

How's their space program coming along ;p pretty spacious place, ach!

Re: First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star

#63

Post by JMKH42 »

DaveZale wrote: post #12
jimbokun wrote: post #2

48 light years is in our back yard. Close enough that we could probably develop a probe to get there in the next few centuries and check it out. What are the current popular candidates for propulsion systems capable of accelerating to near the speed of light?

need to get small fusion reactors online, then many options blossom. And work out safe systems for hibernation, maybe rotate the crew in shifts Oh yeah this is the stuff of science fiction coming to life

Small fusion reactors don't really solve any of the key challenges. You need reaction mass to accelerate, you run out of reaction mass way too quickly even with a magical energy source on board to throw it out the back of the ship really fast.

Re: First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star

#64

Post by echelon »

PxldLtd wrote: post #40
mekdoonggi wrote: post #19

We should build a solar lens telescope. By the time we're ready to use it, we'll have a bunch of candidates to point it at.

There's a project that's going well from NASA for this. Still a moonshot but they've progressed through the early stages well so far. https://www.nasa.gov/general/direct-multipixel-imaging-and-s...

I wonder about all the extraterrestrial AI swarms that have already imaged earth.

Surely it has happened. They must have all spotted our planet millions of years ago and must be watching us with a continuous high-resolution feed. They've seen our dinosaurs. Their interest will really be piqued when they finally see us invent electricity, though that might be some time in the future for them.

Perhaps even gravitational lensing is primitive to them. Perhaps they're able to break and manipulate physics and peer directly into our light cone, breaking the speed of light. Perhaps through direct wormholes they're already here - computronium in the very oxygen atoms that surround us. In rock silicates, in the air you breathe, in your hemes, in your brain. Calculating.

But perhaps we're the only intelligent species in the entire universe. That is also a possibility. Some big names in astrophysics, such as David Kipping, suggest strongly that we should not rule out that hypothesis. I find his suggestions haunting and beautiful at the same time. You need to watch his videos, and this is a good start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqEmYU8Y_rI

And finally, it may be that we're all just a historical simulation. Or maybe that's ascribing too much importance to ourselves. Maybe we're just a slop simulation on some AI's plaything, existing for no reason at all. Background NPCs with self-importance, ephemeral existences. But procedural generation at scale isn't really all too different from the laws of the physical universe itself.

The scale of the universe fills me with awe. Every time I think about it, my worries about random algo-rage and clickbait fades away to nothing. It deeply contextualizes our short time here.

Re: First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star

#65

Post by fellowmartian »

andy_ppp wrote: post #14
jimbokun wrote: post #2

48 light years is in our back yard. Close enough that we could probably develop a probe to get there in the next few centuries and check it out. What are the current popular candidates for propulsion systems capable of accelerating to near the speed of light?

Probably more likely that we work out how to fold spacetime than we get there in anything like a high enough percentage of the speed of light - the fastest object we ever made travelled at something like ~0.064% * C so we are looking at ~750 years with current technology and presumably we'd need to switch on the probe in 3/4 of a millennium and figure out how to slow it down and get it into some sort of orbit around…

It’s highly unlikely we’re ever getting FTL. We should become comfortable with that and let go our fantasies. Let theoretical physicists chug away at this, we should get underway with projects that are possible with known science.

Re: First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star

#66

Post by ghm2199 »

wongarsu wrote: post #45
andy_ppp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably more likely that we work out how to fold spacetime than we get there in anything like a high enough percentage of the speed of light - the fastest object we ever made travelled at something like ~0.064% * C so we are looking at ~750 years with current technology and presumably we'd need to switch on the probe in 3/4 of a millennium and figure out how to slow it down and get it into some sort of orbit around…

With variations on nuclear propulsion we could plausibly get to up to around 12% the speed of light. At least that's the number quoted for Project Daedalus [1], which is using nuclear fusion for the first stage and nuclear-powered ion engines for the second stage. With the cruder but more realistically achievable right now Project Orion design (riding the shockwaves of nuclear bombs) you could still get to ~3% the sp…

I think the only way political will can fund nasa to realize these 1960 design ideas is an infinite capacity arch rival that threatens/render irrelavent either the dollar's supremacy or american power (and just those two, because apparently these days there is no "threat"/need to defend a higher cause, like the neo-liberal rules based system or democratic or human right values). Also that arch-rival that is probably/likely not china(practically speaking)

Re: First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star

#67

Post by imjonse »

echelon wrote: post #64
PxldLtd wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a project that's going well from NASA for this. Still a moonshot but they've progressed through the early stages well so far. https://www.nasa.gov/general/direct-multipixel-imaging-and-s...

I wonder about all the extraterrestrial AI swarms that have already imaged earth. Surely it has happened. They must have all spotted our planet millions of years ago and must be watching us with a continuous high-resolution feed. They've seen our dinosaurs. Their interest will really be piqued when they finally see us invent electricity, though that might be some time in the future for them. Perhaps even gravitationa…

>But perhaps we're the only intelligent species in the entire universe. That is also a possibility. Some big names in astrophysics, such as David Kipping, suggest strongly that we should not rule out that hypothesis

They may be planted by alien AI to lull us into false sense of security.

Re: First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star

#68

Post by o_____________o »

chicken-stew wrote: post #36
Nicholas_C wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was skeptical about that as well so I googled it and: >Helium cannot support life because it is a chemically inert noble gas. It does not form the complex, stable molecular structures (like carbon chains) required for biology. Unlike oxygen, it cannot be used by living organisms for cellular respiration to generate energy, making it an asphyxiant. However, maybe we are projecting our current understanding of biolog…

Well, some years ago helium was a preferred way for suicide. This reflected very bad on the producers of party balloon helium tanks, so they added an amount of oxygen and it was no longer an effective way. So the question becomes: How much of that atmosphere is helium?

> helium was a preferred way for suicide

The era of ridiculous sounding last words came to an end

Re: First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star

#69

Post by ck2 »

we talked about this in great detail yesterday on HN with some fantastic comments

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48939742

NASA has a neat exoplanet catalog where you can also switch to its solar system view

* https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/lhs-1140-b/

Super-Earths are interesting but not technically habitable, at least not by humanoids, the gravity would be insane

There are new telescopes and techniques coming online really soon that can potentially find closer to Earth-sized planets but they probably won't be within 50 light years

adding: hmm maybe gravity not too horrible on 1140b but still INTENSE

(assuming Google's "AI" is correct)

> Gravity Formula: \frac{Mass}{Radius^2}\)Calculation: \(5.6 \div (1.73)^2 = 5.6 \div 2.9929 \approx 1.87\)

> if you weigh 150 lbs on Earth, you would weigh roughly 280.5 lbs on 1140b

Re: First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star

#70

Post by conductr »

echelon wrote: post #64
PxldLtd wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a project that's going well from NASA for this. Still a moonshot but they've progressed through the early stages well so far. https://www.nasa.gov/general/direct-multipixel-imaging-and-s...

I wonder about all the extraterrestrial AI swarms that have already imaged earth. Surely it has happened. They must have all spotted our planet millions of years ago and must be watching us with a continuous high-resolution feed. They've seen our dinosaurs. Their interest will really be piqued when they finally see us invent electricity, though that might be some time in the future for them. Perhaps even gravitationa…

This comment encapsulates how poorly we humans are at accepting unknowns. For me, that explains a lot of our belief systems. The fact we can’t just take the unknown but instead have to fill in the blanks with what ifs. and create a narrative like we know anything about the unknown thing. It helps us feel like we understand it more. That’s literally how religions and a lot of other things get created, it’s a pattern, then the logical person sees the patterns and say it’s a simulation. A quite predictable filling of another blank.
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