NASA update on Kepler tomorrow and rumor mill says it has to do with a near-copy of earth. At least one member of panel is from SETI...
Place your bets!
Oxygen atmosphere?
Radio waves?
Just another "maybe we could live here?
Big Kepler Announcement Tomorrow!
well whatever that is, I am certainly tuning in!
So, Earth 2.0 is only 1,400 light years then. Shall we start packing?
So, Earth 2.0 is only 1,400 light years then. Shall we start packing?
Don't say Earth 2. That was a horrible show.
Don't say Earth 2. That was a horrible show.So, Earth 2.0 is only 1,400 light years then. Shall we start packing?
BUT GRENDLERS
I'm looking forward to 2018 now when we can point the James Webb at it and sniff some atmosphere. 1400 LY is too far away to really matter for us, but it's existence is still pretty exciting.
14 LY would be too far to matter to be honest, unless we can come up with a viable method of instantaneous travel...
Edited by FTS GeckoWell 14 LY we could conceivably get there with a fast probe or even some kind of generation ship without technology that was too terribly advanced from today. 1400 LY is just no unless that warp concept NASA has been talking about bears fruit.
I view .1c as "crazy fast but maybe possible in a few hundred years with the march of technology". 14 light years is 140 years at an average speed of .1c (yes it's a lot more complicated than that). 140 years is something that human organizations can deal with. Even at 1c, 1400 years is a long time.
There's always Alcubierre...
we should start using those mass relays
It's 60 % bigger than Earth. How much more "F" is that compared to that we have here...?
Edited by John TenzerLess than you would think. Gravity is a much more local phenomenon than people tend to intuitively believe. For example if you are standing in the ocean next to a massive land ice sheet and it melts the water around you will actually drop hundreds of feet. It was being held there by gravity from the mass of ice. A 60% larger planet doesn't have that much more mass close to you to raise gravity by much.
Oh it's actually 60% larger in diameter, not mass. It was measured by transit instead of wobble. I thought it was a wobble find so I was assuming we knew the mass. Apparently not.
Phil Plait, as usual, has a great FAQ-fixing summary.
I view .1c as "crazy fast but maybe possible in a few hundred years with the march of technology". 14 light years is 140 years at an average speed of .1c (yes it's a lot more complicated than that). 140 years is something that human organizations can deal with. Even at 1c, 1400 years is a long time.
There's always Alcubierre...
The problem with point to point travel though is that space is not (as widely believed) entirely empty. There's stuff out there. Lots of stuff, ranging in size from a grain of sand to as big as you like. And it's moving around as well, at anything from a snails pace to insanity speed.
And travelling in intergalactic space at .1c, by the time you know something's there, you've already hit it and you're dead. When it comes to space travel, 140 days is enough for all kinds of crazy things to go wrong, let alone 140 years.
Now, if only Event Horizon style folding-space travel was possible, preferably without the hell-dimension side effect, then we could be talking.
we should start using those mass relays
Didn't New Horizons send back a picture of Charon as a frozen Mass Relay?
Oh it's actually 60% larger in diameter, not mass. It was measured by transit instead of wobble. I thought it was a wobble find so I was assuming we knew the mass. Apparently not.
Phil Plait, as usual, has a great FAQ-fixing summary.
I thought as much. So, in that case, we have probably found the place were GW sent the Squats to after having expelled them from their 'verse...!
I view .1c as "crazy fast but maybe possible in a few hundred years with the march of technology". 14 light years is 140 years at an average speed of .1c (yes it's a lot more complicated than that). 140 years is something that human organizations can deal with. Even at 1c, 1400 years is a long time.
There's always Alcubierre...
The problem with point to point travel though is that space is not (as widely believed) entirely empty. There's stuff out there. Lots of stuff, ranging in size from a grain of sand to as big as you like. And it's moving around as well, at anything from a snails pace to insanity speed.
And travelling in intergalactic space at .1c, by the time you know something's there, you've already hit it and you're dead. When it comes to space travel, 140 days is enough for all kinds of crazy things to go wrong, let alone 140 years.
Now, if only Event Horizon style folding-space travel was possible, preferably without the hell-dimension side effect, then we could be talking.
we should start using those mass relays
Didn't New Horizons send back a picture of Charon as a frozen Mass Relay?
I am assuming a tech base that can accelerate something to a tenth of the speed of light can manage a defense against space debris.
I am assuming a tech base that can accelerate something to a tenth of the speed of light can manage a defense against space debris.
Debris is one thing (although a pebble hitting something at .1c is likely to cause one hell of a mess). Continent-sized asteroids that you won't be able to detect until you've already hit them, however...
Whatever way you look at it, it's just yet another hurdle to overcome when it comes to interstellar travel. "Traditional" methods will simply not be enough when it comes to the distances, timescales and potential obstacles involved.
Hubble can spot continent-size Kuiper objects right now. I'm sure an equally-impressive telescope traveling with a 0.1C ship could give them warning enough to adjust course.
Why wouldn't you be able to detect asteroids? You could do liar on a tight cone in front of you, maybe infra-red detection, occlusion of starlight on the path in front of you. You could have microscopic drones drifting ahead to get better sensor data from what's ahead.
Your interstellar ship could even be a massively distributed swarm so a single catastrophic event doesn't end the whole show.
Why wouldn't you be able to detect asteroids? You could do liar on a tight cone in front of you, maybe infra-red detection, occlusion of starlight on the path in front of you. You could have microscopic drones drifting ahead to get better sensor data from what's ahead.
Your interstellar ship could even be a massively distributed swarm so a single catastrophic event doesn't end the whole show.
Detecting and maneuvering are two very different things.
The swarm probes propelled by laser light is a very doable mission in the near future if we can make sure the little probes can last a century or more.
Your interstellar ship could even be a massively distributed swarm so a single catastrophic event doesn't end the whole show.
Seveneves?