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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

#191

Post by gunsle »

jzu48 wrote: post #134
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…

As Lynn Margulis reminded us we are not the main show. Our individual intelligence is highly over rated. The brain itself is kludge upon kludge accumulating over thousands of years, to solve problems that keep changing with time and environmental changes. Its quite a piece of crap actually if you tabulate all the accumulated junk. We arent as interesting as we think we are. Some of the tech and knowledge generated mi…

[flagged]

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

#192

Post by dyauspitr »

ant6n wrote: post #178
hparadiz wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This requires sending something to at least about 548 AU and then effect falls off from there but anything you send that far will be going at a velocity that would keep it going. You would be in effective range for some time but basically you'd need to keep sending satellites to that distance in order to keep using the technique. You'd also want to send them into different directions in order to image different parts…

It’s basically imaging one exoplanet per satellite. Would be good to figure out a way to slow down at 500 AU. In order to maximize the time for observation.

With a Jupiter/solar oberth boost we can at best do around 20 AU per year, so best case scenario it would take atleast 25 years to get there, which honestly isn’t bad at all. For comparison voyager does around 3.6 AU/year.

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

#193

Post by hparadiz »

ant6n wrote: post #178
hparadiz wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This requires sending something to at least about 548 AU and then effect falls off from there but anything you send that far will be going at a velocity that would keep it going. You would be in effective range for some time but basically you'd need to keep sending satellites to that distance in order to keep using the technique. You'd also want to send them into different directions in order to image different parts…

It’s basically imaging one exoplanet per satellite. Would be good to figure out a way to slow down at 500 AU. In order to maximize the time for observation.

It would be most likely a whole solar system. Consider that new horizons only had hours during its flyby to collect all the telemetry that it did. Imagine having 600 pixels of resolution for an exo planet for up to 15 years. Plus all the other telemetry you'll be collecting about the galactic space near us.

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

#194

Post by jdthedisciple »

smb06 wrote: post #187

I feel like I've been hearing about atmosphere on Earth-like planets for a while. Or maybe I've missed some nuance.

This was my first thought too, and your comment the first one I saw when I clicked this. Just thought I'd share that..

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

#195

Post by dleeftink »

Maxamillion96 wrote: post #146
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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOLIMAN https://toliman.space/ They’re building one for stars within 10 parsecs of the sun ( and more specifically for Alpha Centauri) which should launch in the next year

Alternative to resolving an image via Einstein ring lensing?

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

#196

Post by lossolo »

somenameforme wrote: post #128
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.

Depends on who you mean as "we". The speed of light isn't a speed limit. If you can create a ship that is capable of 1g acceleration, it doesn't just stop accelerating as it reaches the speed of light relative to some stationary object, like Earth. Instead you start getting relativistic effects and things start getting very weird with time and distance doing some funky stuff. You keep zooming along just fine from you…

> If you can create a ship that is capable of 1g acceleration, it doesn't just stop accelerating as it reaches the speed of light

For any object with nonzero rest mass, reaching exactly the speed of light in vacuum would require infinite energy.

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

#197

Post by pandoro »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #184
creesch wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If we’re talking about human technology available in a few hundred years, don’t discount far more exotic options. I’ve heard people talk of theoretical terrestrial lasers pushing on tiny probes. With an absolutely gigantic laser and magical material at the back of the probe that won’t instantly vaporize there’s enough energy to get something the size of a smartphone up to a reasonable proportion of the speed of light…

Exactly. Imagine what would be possible after a billion year of technological evolution, heck even just 100'000 years. We already know that space time metric engineering is theoretically possible within our current understanding of physics, we don't have either the technology or access to energy density necessary to do it. And that's only within our limited understanding of how the universe works.

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

#198

Post by hparadiz »

dyauspitr wrote: post #192
ant6n wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s basically imaging one exoplanet per satellite. Would be good to figure out a way to slow down at 500 AU. In order to maximize the time for observation.

With a Jupiter/solar oberth boost we can at best do around 20 AU per year, so best case scenario it would take atleast 25 years to get there, which honestly isn’t bad at all. For comparison voyager does around 3.6 AU/year.

A series of permanent stations near the vicinity of the oberth burns at Jupiter and the sun could add a lot of Delta V by firing a laser at the probe and the probe could fire one back. Even more so if it was a series of laser boosters strategically placed around the solar system. The numbers start to get really crazy.

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

#199

Post by jaapz »

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,…

"dunno" is just a really unsatisfying answer to anything

Currently we don't know a lot of things - but without trying out new ideas how are you ever going to know?

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

#200

Post by hansmayer »

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.

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