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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

#161

Post by tejtm »

myrmidon wrote: post #34
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 is no "building" such a thing. All we could do right now is send the "telescope probe" >500AU away, on the opposite side of the sun from the observation target, then hope it still works 80 years later or so when it gets there. Edit: My point is that you can't "build" such a thing and later point it somewhere-- you have to fly the camera part of the "telescope" about 3 times as far as voyager 1 went, exactly opp…

an ort cloud of eye peices comes to mind

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

#163

Post by recursivecaveat »

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.

We are still so slow and have had space travel for so little time, we are almost certainly on the "wait" side of the wait equation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wait_Equation

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

#164

Post by parasti »

isodev wrote: post #71
fellowmartian wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would help if our science wasn’t distracted by things like global warming and nazi governments though. There are definitely ways we can help the process * right now *

Good luck doing anything on any other planet if you can't even handle your own that's perfectly suited for your kind of life form.

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

#165

Post by nradov »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #124
JorgeGT wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the Earth last Wednesday at 0.25º resolution (roughly 28 km per pixel at the equator): https://neo.gsfc.nasa.gov/servlet/RenderData?si=2050444&cs=r...

It's dead.

What a shame. I had expected the Earth to last a bit longer.

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

#167

Post by throw4847285 »

I'm always so alienated (sorry) by the excitement around things like this. People start fantasizing about FTL and space arks and there is just no evidence that any of that is possible, desirable, effective, anything really.

I know I'm a killjoy, but I do think there's something negative about the impact of science fiction on engineers. Like, the people who tend (no offense) to be the most literal, black and white thinkers get exposed to art and instead of processing it as the output of human creativity, they start to imagine that it's desirable or even real.

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

#168

Post by chrsw »

creesch wrote: post #144
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?

Just going to recycle this comment I made in reply to an almost identical comment as yours. I don't think you folks realize how big space actually is. The speed of light is 1079 252 848 km/h, the fastest space craft ever made was the Parker Solar probe (using a sling shot) clocking in at 692 000 km/h. So at that speed it would take, 1559 years to travel one light year. This planet sits at a distance of 48 light years…

Science fiction has entertained and inspired millions of people and we should all be grateful for that but it has also distorted what people think space really is.

When you consider the scale of space it becomes pretty understandable why the Milky Way isn't teeming with civilizations sending large amounts of mass all over the galaxy. A realization one comes to despite the facts that it has taken humans a blink of an eye (on a galactic timescale) to go from tools to rockets and the Milky way is billions of years older than the entire history of the Earth.

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

#169

Post by ClumsyPilot »

throw4847285 wrote: post #167

I'm always so alienated (sorry) by the excitement around things like this. People start fantasizing about FTL and space arks and there is just no evidence that any of that is possible, desirable, effective, anything really. I know I'm a killjoy, but I do think there's something negative about the impact of science fiction on engineers. Like, the people who tend (no offense) to be the most literal, black and white thi…

There is too much fantasy about distant habitable planet and not enough about making a planet in solar system habitable or building artificial habitats

The second is likely easier than the first

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

#170

Post by tulio_ribeiro »

Didn't know a rocky planet in the habitable zone of a red dwarf could retain atmosphere against intense stellar stripping.

Red dwarfs are known to be cooler (the habitable zone is therefore closer) and unstable.

I don't think LHS 1140b is "Earth-like" at all. Rather, it's more like a mini-Neptune, being boiled off by its star.

Edit: JWST emission spectroscopy of LHS 1140b as it passes behind its star rules out a mini-Neptune. https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.15136

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