NASA says distant exoplanet could have rare water ocean, possible hint of life
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Re: NASA says distant exoplanet could have rare water ocean, possible hint of life
#2K2-18 is a flare star.
Re: NASA says distant exoplanet could have rare water ocean, possible hint of life
#3 > the agency also hinted at even more remarkable possibility in the
> potential finding of a molecule called dimethyl sulfide (DMS), which
> on Earth is only produced by life.
Re: NASA says distant exoplanet could have rare water ocean, possible hint of life
#4https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37468342 (109 comments)
Re: NASA says distant exoplanet could have rare water ocean, possible hint of life
#5[deleted]
Re: NASA says distant exoplanet could have rare water ocean, possible hint of life
#6If the presence of dimethyl sulphide is confirmed, what would the next steps be? Presumably sending a probe would not be feasible in any foreseeable timeframe?
Re: NASA says distant exoplanet could have rare water ocean, possible hint of life
#7If the presence of dimethyl sulphide is confirmed, what would the next steps be? Presumably sending a probe would not be feasible in any foreseeable timeframe?
The best time to send a probe to an exoplanet is 200 years ago. The second-best time to do it is now.
Re: NASA says distant exoplanet could have rare water ocean, possible hint of life
#8If the presence of dimethyl sulphide is confirmed, what would the next steps be? Presumably sending a probe would not be feasible in any foreseeable timeframe?
> Presumably sending a probe would not be feasible in any foreseeable timeframe?
With global resources we can do it easily but the people in charge of our countries wouldn't have a job if they didn't invent fake boogeymen to waste cash on instead.
We have plenty of starshot proposals that are incredibly cheap compared to other things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot
Re: NASA says distant exoplanet could have rare water ocean, possible hint of life
#9If the presence of dimethyl sulphide is confirmed, what would the next steps be? Presumably sending a probe would not be feasible in any foreseeable timeframe?
Next steps will be: Observation, more observation and if it remains sufficiently interesting then perhaps some bespoke observation. Nothing will be sent in the foreseeable future.
Re: NASA says distant exoplanet could have rare water ocean, possible hint of life
#10If the presence of dimethyl sulphide is confirmed, what would the next steps be? Presumably sending a probe would not be feasible in any foreseeable timeframe?
This star is 124 LY away. If we launched our fastest ever probe in that direction, which was New Horizons, it would take 2.2 million years for it to reach the system. Assuming the probe could then be still operational to transmit back data, it would then take 124 years for the data to be received.
So the next step would be to build better and better telescopes to observe these planets, learn about their composition, and inspire people to study and fund the sciences.
There are some proposals of how to build fast probes that could visit very close star systems that could maybe, maybe reach a the 4 LY to Proxima Centuri within a human lifetime. But 124 LY is so far that even the Starshot proposal would take nearly 800 years to receive data back.