Another Earth?

[richy]

Forbes


Nasa

[JoshL]

Awesome stuff! They also found a few moons orbiting exoplanets that could be habitable, so they may have found Endor too! And this is just in our tiny corner of our one galaxy....

Sense of scale for a moment: this planet is 600 light years away. Our galaxy is estimated between 100,000 and 120,000 light years across, and the disc is 1,000 light years thick. Put another way: picture a 12" pizza that is 1/10th of an inch thick (crappy floppy new york style). This planet is closer to us than the pizza is thick. Oh, and there are more pizzas on the tables nearby....

And, yes, by habitable, we mean habitable by us. There's certainly no need to limit life in the galaxy to carbon based oxygen breathers, but we're looking for something we can relate to rather than hyperintelligent shades of the color blue.

[JoshL]

Oh, addendum:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12...le_exoplanets/
To summarize, the US Military wants to restart SETI to track satellites. In giving them money to restart, SETI can resume scanning for alien transmissions. Only now they have an idea of where to point the thing.

Bear in mind that we've only been generating radio noise since the late 1800s. If there is life on this planet, and if they developed at the same time that we did, odds are we won't hear any broadcasts in our lifetime, or the next couple hundred years. But if they just HAPPEN to be a little bit older than us, we could theoretically listen to them develop their own tech.

...around the same time as we get hit with FTL torpedoes for spying on them! ;-)

[richy]

Originally Posted by JoshL

Awesome stuff! They also found a few moons orbiting exoplanets that could be habitable, so they may have found Endor too! And this is just in our tiny corner of our one galaxy....

Endor! So cool.

Or, for that matter...how about Pandora?

Originally Posted by JoshL

Sense of scale for a moment: this planet is 600 light years away. Our galaxy is estimated between 100,000 and 120,000 light years across, and the disc is 1,000 light years thick. Put another way: picture a 12" pizza that is 1/10th of an inch thick (crappy floppy new york style). This planet is closer to us than the pizza is thick. Oh, and there are more pizzas on the tables nearby....

That may be the awesomest simile I've heard to illustrate that sort of stuff.

Originally Posted by JoshL

And, yes, by habitable, we mean habitable by us. There's certainly no need to limit life in the galaxy to carbon based oxygen breathers, but we're looking for something we can relate to rather than hyperintelligent shades of the color blue.

"...hyperintelligent shades of the color blue."


Cool article: I don't recall those other articles explaining how it was largely(?) the Airforce that helped to get SETI going again.

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

Kepler 22b is making big news.

[MissingProductions]

Red this on yahoo a few days ago, it's pretty intense! All we need now is a spacecraft that can travel that far quickly. Maybe take some notes from Wall-E.

[IndieBudget]

We also need spacecraft that would shield our delicate bodies from cosmic rays and the like, I have read that we cannot handle long periods in our current spacecrafts without suffering serious effects from stuff penetrating the hulls of the craft.

[JoshL]

Radiation in space is a big, big problem, but one that I think could be overcome. Now that a trip to Mars is being expressed in months rather than years, I think we'd be fine for exploring our solar system a bit more, but would need to be sorted if we wanted to build a moonbase, or terraform mars (part of what makes Earth safe is the magnetic field).

More cool space news/food for thought:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/me...r20111207.html
Mars? Once wet? That's a yes!

[richy]

Newshour Segment

Originally Posted by MissingProductions

Red this on yahoo a few days ago, it's pretty intense! All we need now is a spacecraft that can travel that far quickly. Maybe take some notes from Wall-E.

No doubt! According to the report above, it would take the fastest contemporary rocketship (the space shuttle?) 25 million years to get there! Ouch. But, maybe faster space ships like ones powered by plasma engines and carrying multi-generation trips?

Originally Posted by IndieBudget

We also need spacecraft that would shield our delicate bodies from cosmic rays and the like, I have read that we cannot handle long periods in our current spacecrafts without suffering serious effects from stuff penetrating the hulls of the craft.

If only they could invent something like Star Trek's shields, for one thing. Sadly, I don't think anyone should get too optimistic about terraforming and that sort of thing unless they figure out how to create magnetic field shields. What use will it be to them if they figure out how to terraform planets like they do in Aliens, but don't also figure out how to create magnetic fields to protect the atmospheres they create? Look, I've heard from how many documentaries about the Earth and about Astronomy and etc that it's the Earth's magnetic field that allows its atmosphere to continue to exist. The magnetic field is created by the Earth's molten and spinning iron core. Now, how the hell are you going to reproduce that on a dead planet or planetoid that does not have a molten, spinning iron core? How would you even approximate it on a small scale for a part of such a planet? Although, I've heard that one idea is that people could live underground on the Moon or Mars or wherever. Would that effectively block the cosmic rays and such? What about space stations?

[JoshL]

Originally Posted by richy

Look, I've heard from how many documentaries about the Earth and about Astronomy and etc that it's the Earth's magnetic field that allows its atmosphere to continue to exist. The magnetic field is created by the Earth's molten and spinning iron core. Now, how the hell are you going to reproduce that on a dead planet or planetoid that does not have a molten, spinning iron core?

This is the key right here. If we could a) seed a planet/moon/asteroid/etc's core with sufficient iron (depending on composition of the core, maybe some fusion/fission/alchemy would do the trick) and then b) heat it to a molton state, physics would probably take care of most of the rest. Seed the surface with the elements we need, give it some time (decades on the low end, I would imagine) and there's your terraforming! Of course, if Firefly has taught us anything, that's not without individual unexpected problems.

If we extend that idea to long range spaceships (we're definitely in sci-fi territory now), you could conceivably create a ship with a small bubble of atmosphere around it, maintained by the magnetic field. Breathing suits would not be necessary to do surface repairs (though it'd still be damn cold!) and with a large enough magnetic-core ship, that might take care of gravity issues. Much safer going out to clean the vents if you aren't going to float away.

Merging some more theoritical science and getting WAY FURTHER into sci-fi, if we confirm and get our hands on the Higgs boson (which is what gives particles mass) we could conceptually control the mass of an object, boosting it in space to give the ship more gravity. Perhaps the core (let's call it a stabilization core) could be made super-dense, almost to the level of a black hole. After all, if we get to the point where we can manipulate elementary particles, containing a black hole should be a piece of cake!

As a tangent from a tangent from a tangent, I hate the nickname "the god particle". It doesn't describe what a Higgs boson is, implies an overstatement of importance and just pisses off fundies. Oddly enough, in the book the nickname came from, the physicist who wrote it wanted to call it "the goddamn particle" because it is so elusive. The publisher nixed it, made it more controversial and created the furvor of ignorance we find in pop culture these days.

Anyway, lots of stuff to work out before we can check out other planets, but plenty of inspiration for some fun sci-fi!

[richy]

Originally Posted by JoshL

This is the key right here. If we could a) seed a planet/moon/asteroid/etc's core with sufficient iron (depending on composition of the core, maybe some fusion/fission/alchemy would do the trick) and then b) heat it to a molton state, physics would probably take care of most of the rest. Seed the surface with the elements we need, give it some time (decades on the low end, I would imagine) and there's your terraforming! Of course, if Firefly has taught us anything, that's not without individual unexpected problems.

Oh, Firelfly dealt with that? I never really watched Firefly. Very cool.

Originally Posted by JoshL

If we extend that idea to long range spaceships (we're definitely in sci-fi territory now), you could conceivably create a ship with a small bubble of atmosphere around it, maintained by the magnetic field. Breathing suits would not be necessary to do surface repairs (though it'd still be damn cold!) and with a large enough magnetic-core ship, that might take care of gravity issues. Much safer going out to clean the vents if you aren't going to float away.

Magnetic-core ship? Wicked. Now those are some very cool ideas I really like.

Originally Posted by JoshL

Merging some more theoritical science and getting WAY FURTHER into sci-fi, if we confirm and get our hands on the Higgs boson (which is what gives particles mass) we could conceptually control the mass of an object, boosting it in space to give the ship more gravity. Perhaps the core (let's call it a stabilization core) could be made super-dense, almost to the level of a black hole. After all, if we get to the point where we can manipulate elementary particles, containing a black hole should be a piece of cake!

As a tangent from a tangent from a tangent, I hate the nickname "the god particle". It doesn't describe what a Higgs boson is, implies an overstatement of importance and just pisses off fundies. Oddly enough, in the book the nickname came from, the physicist who wrote it wanted to call it "the goddamn particle" because it is so elusive. The publisher nixed it, made it more controversial and created the furvor of ignorance we find in pop culture these days.

Anyway, lots of stuff to work out before we can check out other planets, but plenty of inspiration for some fun sci-fi!

Yes, fun inspiration!

[JoshL]

Digging up this thread (or maybe just taking a long slow cryo-sleep spaceship to get here), we've found a closer one!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02...ldilocks_zone/
22 light years away. That pizza analogy I used? It's now a piece of paper. For a 12" galaxy-pizza, this planet is 0.0022 inches away (the average thickness of 20# copy paper is around 0.0038). So relatively close as to really call it a neighbor!

Of course, we can't travel near the speed of light yet, nor build a ship that could cart people for 22 years, but in sci-fi terms, that's easily conceivable. Hell, at half the speed of light, you're looking at 44 year trek. Tell me you couldn't find people to man that, doubly so if you consider a sustainable super-ship; people live, give birth and die on board. Gene Wolfe wrote some good books on such a ship (and another of my favorite books which I could mention, but that's the big twist at the end, which I wouldn't want to give away).

Currently our speed record is the Galileo probe (which studied, then crashed into Jupiter at about 106,900 mph, or 0.00016 the speed of light). The fastest we've managed to get something to travel, and we did that by crashing it. Long way to go in that department.

But we're working on it: also in this morning's news on the Reg:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02...ts_superdraco/
SpaceX, the world's biggest private rocket company, has developed a new safety/low-gravity landing engine. The tests say it works the way they wanted it to. If they could get there, this could land one of their Dragon capsules (love the name, by the by) on Mars.

This stuff greatly excites me :-)

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

When I had lunch at NASA a few years ago with an astronaut, he said another big concern with long space travel is bone cartiledge falls apart in the absence of gravity. Spaceships of the future will need artificial gravity for Human passengers. Robtos are ideal astronauts for the time being because they are built more durable for long space travel.

[Dreadylocks]

It's not bone cartilage. You lose your bone density. And unfortunately our time on the space station has shown that no amount of exercise, high impact or not, will stop the body from doing this. You must have to have 1G of gravity.

On the other note. 22 freakin' light years away?! Holy crap that's close. Soooo cool.

Anyone else check out the Niel DeGrasse Tyson Nova doc about long-term space travel? It had some interesting segments

[richy]

Originally Posted by JoshL

This stuff greatly excites me :-)

That's exciting stuff!

Originally Posted by Dreadylocks

On the other note. 22 freakin' light years away?! Holy crap that's close. Soooo cool.

Anyone else check out the Niel DeGrasse Tyson Nova doc about long-term space travel? It had some interesting segments

Yes! That's great stuff.

Nova: Space & Flight Videos

Check out the "Can We Make it to Mars?" espisode. It's a great episode about humans and space travel.



And this is really exciting too.

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT)

Listen to (or read) this NPR report.

Want To Make A Giant Telescope Mirror? Here's How


And this is the one I first heard on the radio. It's a bit more personable and fun, perhaps, as well as shorter but with less information.

Mega Mirror To Power Massive New Telescope

What's really exciting is that they expect to be able to actually see other planets going around other stars. But, best case scenario, it will be 2020 at the soonest.