NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth • Hacker News Board

Re: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

#161

Post by SneakerXZ » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 8:40 PM UTC

phantarch wrote: post #5

At 2 billion years older than Earth, I can't begin to imagine what kinds of things could possibly be living on this planet. Given, of course, that it's got the right ingredients for life to arise. What if it's suffered huge extinctions recently? What if there's a domineering species out to conquer the planet just like humans? What if there's a society there more sophisticated than us? It's a very exciting discovery.

I am surprised more people don't believe all this is just a trick because we base everything on our knowledge what if something out there is tricking us? We see the universe through a telescope and other sensors. But if something puts something in front of it, you will see different reality. It is like if you use binoculars and I put a fake image in front of you, you could start believing there is something else. It is also like magician.

So we could be in ZOO experiment. Other civilizations want to see if we are capable of evolving and joining them so they make sure we are not disturbed by other life out there because if we discover intelligent life, we will freak out. We might start fighting for our survival and it could affect our evolution to higher species.

We could also be a part of some computer simulation (with enough power you can create rules with particles and simulate the universe). Maybe somebody is trying to answer this question: If you create a big enough simulation, will be the simulation able to figure out it, it is being simulated?

Or maybe everything that we see is true but it is just impossible to overcome some physical limitations. We assume there are no limits and everything is possible and one day we will master it. But what if communicating and traveling through universe is nearly impossible? Maybe there are limits that we don't know about yet.

Maybe every civilization reaches point where they know the answer to everything and they don't see a reason to live anymore or they leave the universe and move somewhere else.

My point is that we assume something that will eventually turn out false and everyone will be surprised by the truth.

Re: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

#162

Post by ryangittins » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 8:40 PM UTC

tatterdemalion wrote: post #110

qq66 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll have to wait 6000 years to see it on YouTube: 1500 for them to hear about YouTube and 4500 for them to upload (assuming TCP)

It seems like UDP is probably a better protocol for this use case.

I've got a really good joke about UDP, but you might not get it.

Re: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

#163

Post by Jweb_Guru » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 8:42 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #119

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't just sending something (or someone) to another star (though it would take far longer than 1400 years with any currently plausible technology and energy expenditure). It's sending something accurately to another star (can't use too much energy adjusting course, since fractional additions to weight require tremendously more power) with a payload that's still operational by the time it gets there. Thin…

There's been some nifty work done on the practicality of electrodynamic tethers and using them to turn a starship against the galactic magnetic field. You won't get sci-fi ship maneuverability out of this, but it's useful for course corrections without having to carry or expend reaction mass. As far as onboard power sources go, fission seems perfectly cromulent. You just have to protect those radiators.

I can only find one source on using tethers in interstellar travel: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/2005021.... To quote the article, for energy production:

> Since the tether current is 1,333 amps, ne = 3 X 10‘‘ m-3 and the ship’s velocity is 900 km/sec, the effective electron-collector radius is approximately 3 13 km.

This appears to have a toroidal-field ramscoop as a prerequisite.

For thrustless turning, a 0.06 degree turn requires a tether 10^3 km long:

> To obtain a six-degree trajectory modification during a 1,400-year journey with the tether current assumed, the tether length must be increased by a factor of lOOX to equal l0^5 km. This would increase tether mass to 2.7 X lo5 kg.

And this is using a reference ship many scientists are skeptical about:

> ...it is assumed here that the primary propulsion for these ships is the ultra-thin, space manufactured solar sail unfurled as close to the Sun as possible at the perihelion of a parabolic or hyperbolic solar orbit. After acceleration to interstellar cruise velocity, it is also assumed that sail and cables are wound around the habitat section to provide extra cosmic ray shielding. The sail is unfurled again for deceleration at the destination star.... since the baseline sailcraft for this analysis is somewhat faster, either more advanced sail/cable materials are required or the pre-perihelion orbit is hyperbolic.

I'd definitely categorize that under "experimental power sources and unproven physics." Perhaps you are thinking of a different article?

Re: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

#164

Post by Mahn » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 8:44 PM UTC

crocal wrote: post #140

ilurk wrote: post #125

It feels extremely frustrating to know -- not just wonder but to know exactly where -- that there are planets similar to our own, which have a very high probability of harboring life, yet to be condemned to never be able to take a really close look at it. No FTL travel, no working cryonics, no mind-upload tech. Just harsh reality.

Frustrating or motivating? As far as I am concerned, if I live long enough to get even a blurry image of an exoplanet, I will die happy. And the best part: I have a good chance of this happening: http://exep.jpl.nasa.gov/presentations/AIAA_Space_2014Blackw...

Not saying that getting an image of an exoplanet at all wouldn't be exciting, but I'd die happier if we could land a rover there.

Re: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

#165

Post by guiomie » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 8:45 PM UTC

"385-day orbit" ... Can't wait to have to take into consideration different "year" zone in my code.

Re: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

#166

Post by codeshaman » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 8:45 PM UTC

maaku wrote: post #77

phantarch wrote: post #5

At 2 billion years older than Earth, I can't begin to imagine what kinds of things could possibly be living on this planet. Given, of course, that it's got the right ingredients for life to arise. What if it's suffered huge extinctions recently? What if there's a domineering species out to conquer the planet just like humans? What if there's a society there more sophisticated than us? It's a very exciting discovery.

If there was an intelligent life form, like humans, it would have expanded into the cosmos and colonized the entire galaxy within only a million years of developing technology. Since we don't see traces of them everywhere, we must presume they don't exist.

Or maybe the next step in the evolution of a civilization is the realization that 'colonizing' is much more fun if the colonists are just dropped off without any technology and let to develop into a civilization and discover who they are and do the same thing over again. You know, just to keep the game going. All that's needed for that is already encoded in their DNA.

Maybe there are other channels of exploring spacetime than just the physical reality. Maybe that's where all the advanced civilizations reside.. Like the place we are in before we are born or after we die...

1 million years of mind evolution should not only bring advanced tech, but also advanced wisdom and understanding of who we are and what we are doing here. I doubt that expansion to all possible planets is the ultimate goal, the mystery must go much deeper than that ;).

Re: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

#167

Post by rvlouie » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 8:54 PM UTC

wmeredith wrote: post #89

qrendel wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I propose it's unlikely that any technological civilizations more advanced than our own have existed on this planet in the past few billion years, otherwise some subgroup of their species would likely have seeded the local universe with life (it's only ~1400 lightyears away) and they would be here instead of us. Unless of course the panspermia hypothesis is correct and that is indeed where life on Earth came from.

Maybe they are here and it IS us?

http://giphy.com/gifs/tim-and-eric-mind-blown-EldfH1VJdbrwY

Re: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

#168

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 8:59 PM UTC

Cyph0n wrote: post #150

tomjakubowski wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's jarring to think that if intelligent life were on Kepler 452-b and observing Earth, we're so far away that they would be seeing our "civilizations" in 615 AD: shrinking global population as the old Roman and Byzantine empires are overrun by barbarian hordes and Arab conquest, with some pockets of human progress in China. Is there something uncivilized about the Arab conquest of Byzantine lands? Had the Kepler…

It is more proper to refer to them as Muslims, not Arabs. The whole point of Islam was to unite everyone under the same ideology. That's why it's called the Islamic civilization. Source: I'm both an Arab and a Muslim.

[deleted]

Re: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

#169

Post by javert » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 9:03 PM UTC

qrendel wrote: post #56

DuskStar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently it has a diameter 60% larger than that of the Earth, and so if we assume it has the same density as the Earth it would have about 16m/s^2 gravity on the surface, and an orbital velocity of around 12km/s @ ~1000km (in comparison to the Earth, where a 1000km circular orbit is closer to 7km/s). This means that merely achieving orbit would be approximately as difficult as launching a probe on a Hohmann transfe…

To colonize or seed life you don't need to launch huge space vehicles with enough life support to maintain a breeding population, though. You can just launch some kind of self-replicating microbes capable of directing themselves into the forms of life you want to encourage over time. The precise ability to do this would depend on your current state of technology, but we're pretty close to developing full blown synthe…

You seem to be assuming a notion of continual human progress. In a few hundred years, we'll probably be in another Dark Age, judging by current trends. We're like the Roman Empire in 200 AD.

Progress is the exception, not the rule, so far in human history.

Re: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

#170

Post by tempestn » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 9:07 PM UTC

rogeryu wrote: post #143

angersock wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least 25% of it will be over IPv6!

> At least 25% of it will be over IPv6! We probably will need IPv10 to connect all the dots in the sky!

Actually no! Estimates I found are of around 10^23 stars in the universe. There are over 10^38 IPv6 addresses, so even if there were tens of inhabitable worlds per star and billions or even trillions of addresses per world, we'd have enough! (Although it is possible that stars number is a significant underestimate.)