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It's around 100 light years away from Earth for anyone interested.
Since it's heavier than Earth, what about the rocket equation? Colonizing it may mean the inhabitants could never leave it.
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I have thought about this a lot. I have said for a long time that human space exploration doesn't make any sense to me. Space is so hostile to our life in general it seems that only purpose-built machines make any sense for the job. But of course for the preservation of our species, we would want to be able to send the "seeds" of our ecosystem to other places. But then, if we have progressed to that level of technolo…
> But of course for the preservation of our species, we would want to be able to send the "seeds" of our ecosystem to other places. Or we could, you know, take better care of the planet we’re already on.
We could be doing our absolute best and still be surprised pikachus anyways. And there's no scifi remedy that will help us resolve these problems, we're not even K1, much less K2 - who's on Earth when it comes dies.
As the only known example of intelligent life in the observable universe, we should be doing everything we can to preserve ourselves. Having everyone on one planet is not a good idea if you're looking for survival on geological timescales (and/or have bad luck).
Based on those observations, the exoplanet appears to be about 70% larger than Earth with just five times its mass. That means it’s less dense than Earth Seems like a rather large leap to go from that to "it's a water world", at least in these days where we get a "this new exoplanet may be covered in water!" headline every few months.
So its a droplet, were a small moony core tumbles around in the crushing depths?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_diagram#/media/File%3A...
As soon as I hear "light years" things start sounding a lot like religion.
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I don’t think interstellar travel necessarily implies much better tech than we currently have. I mean, Project Orion style nuke-powered spaceships can get you there in a lifetime but unless you wanna nuke your colony whenever someone needs to leave you still might be stuck on the surface.
What? A nuke in space will have very little impact on a planet. A nuke on a planet doesn't have much impact on the planet either: see all the tests done on earth.
Nuclear propulsion isn't the only alternative we have for reaching low orbits. Land-powered rockets are probably much better, and there is always the odd high-elevation rail or space elevator (but those get bad fast on large planets).
Based on those observations, the exoplanet appears to be about 70% larger than Earth with just five times its mass. That means it’s less dense than Earth Seems like a rather large leap to go from that to "it's a water world", at least in these days where we get a "this new exoplanet may be covered in water!" headline every few months.
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The seeds of humanity won't be humanity at all, but the AI.
Kind of a fun hybrid where AI is clearly dominant in an established solar system, but it ends up being impossible to miniaturize the enormous supply chain necessary to fabricate microprocessors, so to colonize a new solar system it actually ends up being necessary to send self-replicating carbon-based humans who will then bootstrap the industrial supply chain necessary for AGI. (repeat ad infinitum for the rest of th…
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Earth is not an exoplanet, it is merely a planet.
"merely a planet", it's sad that the thing that gives everything life and beauty and wonder can be so easily dismissed nowadays...
