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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

#81

Post by notaustinpowers »

bilsbie wrote: post #43

Am I understanding right? They detected an atmosphere but don’t know what it’s made of?

They detected helium escaping from the upper atmosphere which they believe to be evidence of a retained atmosphere, but haven't been able to fully identify the elements present in the lower atmosphere.

Due to the density of the planet they believe it could be a water world, or a mostly-icy world due to the lack of hydrogen found, and the lower atmosphere could consist of nitrogen, water vapor, and carbon dioxide. Since the host star is very inactive, there's little atmospheric erosion that would strip away a heavier atmosphere.

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

#82

Post by [deleted] »

andrewflnr wrote: post #41
detritus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but it is horrifically long in terms of human stuff.

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.

[deleted]

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

#83

Post by oceanplexian »

detritus wrote: post #52
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.

I have no doubt that even the most republican of cultures launched from Earth would end up thoroughly monarchistic by the time the generation ships arrived at their destination. At best monarchistic - who knows what savage new forms of society could evolve in that sort of context?

There is a lot of precedent for this. Even on Earth, in 2026, international maritime law states that there is no such thing as a vessel with "democracy" and that a captain always has supreme command. Ships, airplanes, etc are all in a category that operate as strict autocracies.

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

#84

Post by The_Blade »

conductr wrote: post #70
echelon wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

[flagged]

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

#85

Post by technothrasher »

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?

Hmm, really? That's interesting.... [time passes] ... I found more information than I really needed on how to kill one's self with helium, and I saw some places making suggestions that helium be cut with oxygen, seemingly starting with a New Zealand coroner in 2011, but nothing suggesting this had been implemented at any sort of scale. The links I found on Amazon for party balloon helium tanks all mostly proudly state they are 99%+ helium.

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

#86

Post by dempedempe »

> Researchers have found the first atmosphere surrounding an Earth-like, rocky planet orbiting within the habitable zone of a distant star.

Well, if they observed not only a planet orbiting the star but also the planet's atmosphere, it must not be a very "distant" star.

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

#87

Post by dTal »

mekdoonggi wrote: post #33
sgt wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory we can then get 100 meter resolution on alien worlds. That would be insane.

According to AI, an equivalent would be roughly when Google maps shows you 10mi/20km reference scale. Turning off the labels, aliens would probably assume that the world is naturally full of green stuff that is dealing with some strange grey infestation.

Even on that scale, major roads and agricultural grids are clearly visible. The mark of abstract intelligence is unmistakeable.

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

#88

Post by bradley13 »

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...

Wow. 25km resolution of the exoplanet's surface.

Of course, getting the telescope into place, steering it, etc. - that's the hard part.

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

#89

Post by exitb »

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…

> But even at 0.12c, we are looking at 400 years to get there. And we'd be zooming by at 12% the speed of light. If we want to slow down a bit that'd add hundreds of billions to the cost.

That’s the really hard part. If it’s almost science fiction to accelerate to 0.12c, it’s certainly much more difficult to slow down. At that speed we’d travel and pass this small system in mere minutes.

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

#90

Post by dempedempe »

fellowmartian wrote: post #65
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…

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.

Even if FTL is achievable (which I agree, highly unlikely), it's still extraordinarily slow on cosmic scales. The closest star is a little over 4 ly away!

And probing the universe outside the Milky Way? Forget about it.

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