Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

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MetalHeader
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Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

Post by MetalHeader »

Alan Boyle writes: Astronomers say they've found the first planet beyond our solar system that could have the right size and setting to sustain life as we know it, only 20 light-years from Earth.

"My own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent," Steven Vogt, an astrophysicist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, told reporters today. "I have almost no doubt about it."

The discovery, published online in The Astrophysical Journal, is the result of 11 years of observations at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Astronomers participating in the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey detected the planet by tracking the faint gravitational wobbles it produced in its parent star. Now they say there may well be many more planets out there like this one.

"The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common," Vogt said in a news release.

Read More...
http://www.the-bored-ninja.tk/2018/03/0 ... arby-star/
Simon E.
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Re: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

Post by Simon E. »

Amazing how these speculative reports (and I am agnostic on the matter) seem to coincide with funding issues at both NASA and in uni's.. :smile:
But look at the science..a 'wobble' in the orbit of an unobserved planet has led Vogt to declare with '100% certainty' that this indicates that there is life on it.
Speculative statements like that in any other sphere of science would have the person involved laughed out of town..
Last edited by Simon E. on Tue Mar 06, 2018 1:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Grigoris
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Re: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

Post by Grigoris »

Excellent! A new planet for us to destroy!
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Lobsang Chojor
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Re: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

Post by Lobsang Chojor »

Where is the quote for his personal feelings? I couldn't find it anywhere in the article and it's very odd for a scientist to make such a claim.
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Re: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

Post by Norwegian »

This isn't news.

Gliese 581g was discovered in 2010. And the source site for this article is not a science site, but more like a spam site. Here's an article from 2016 on Gliese 581g: https://www.space.com/23821-gliese-581g.html which shows that this exoplanet may not even exist in the first place (there are of course many, many other exoplanets that does exist).

Better to rely on reputable sites for this kind of news, like www.space.com and https://phys.org/

Here's a list of discovered exoplanets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exoplanets_(full)

Also:
http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-e ... ts-catalog
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... exoplanets
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_n ... candidates
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Re: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

Post by joy&peace »

Astronomers are usually more realistic.
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Re: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

Post by Queequeg »

Grigoris wrote: Tue Mar 06, 2018 12:40 pm Excellent! A new planet for us to destroy!
Good chance the inhabitants already trashed it.
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
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Re: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

Post by joy&peace »

I am interested in Buddhist Cosmology as well.
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Re: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

Post by Wayfarer »

‘Only 20 light years’.

The famous little probe that passed out of the Solar System after having travelled for 30 years or something - point it towards that planet, and it will take hundreds of millions of years to get there.

A light year is an astronomical distance.

We’re never going to get there in a physical vehicle. It’s just too great a distance.
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Re: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

Post by catmoon »

Wayfarer wrote: Wed Mar 07, 2018 8:10 am ‘Only 20 light years’.

The famous little probe that passed out of the Solar System after having travelled for 30 years or something - point it towards that planet, and it will take hundreds of millions of years to get there.

A light year is an astronomical distance.

We’re never going to get there in a physical vehicle. It’s just too great a distance.

Actually a figure of 40,000 years has been used a lot. So it's not quite as bad as all that.
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Re: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

Post by Norwegian »

catmoon wrote: Wed Mar 07, 2018 8:39 am
Wayfarer wrote: Wed Mar 07, 2018 8:10 am ‘Only 20 light years’.

The famous little probe that passed out of the Solar System after having travelled for 30 years or something - point it towards that planet, and it will take hundreds of millions of years to get there.

A light year is an astronomical distance.

We’re never going to get there in a physical vehicle. It’s just too great a distance.

Actually a figure of 40,000 years has been used a lot. So it's not quite as bad as all that.
We won't get there with normal rockets or anything (at least not fast...), but if we manage to get warp drive technology then it's a different story altogether. And with such a drive outfitted on numerous vessels, there's also a chance of extracting resources from asteroids and similar, instead of planet earth.

Also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White%E2% ... rferometer
Warp-drive research and potential for interstellar propulsion
The NASA research team has postulated that their findings could reduce the energy requirements for a spaceship moving at ten times the speed of light ("warp 2") from the mass–energy equivalent of the planet Jupiter to that of the Voyager 1 spacecraft (~700 kg)[3] or less.[19]

By harnessing the physics of cosmic inflation, future spaceships crafted to satisfy the laws of these mathematical equations might actually be able to get somewhere unthinkably fast and without adverse effects.[20]

Physicist and EarthTech CEO Harold E. Puthoff has explained that, contrary to widespread belief, even the highly blue-shifted light seen on board such a spaceship would not fry its crew, being bathed in strong UV light and X-rays. It would, however, be dangerous to anyone seeing it fly by closely.[10]
Warp Drive May Be More Feasible Than Thought, Scientists Say
https://www.space.com/17628-warp-drive- ... light.html

https://www.space.com/34797-impossible- ... ished.html
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Re: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

Post by Simon E. »

I won't hold my breath.
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Re: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

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catmoon wrote: Wed Mar 07, 2018 8:39 am
Wayfarer wrote: Wed Mar 07, 2018 8:10 am ‘Only 20 light years’.

The famous little probe that passed out of the Solar System after having travelled for 30 years or something - point it towards that planet, and it will take hundreds of millions of years to get there.

A light year is an astronomical distance.

We’re never going to get there in a physical vehicle. It’s just too great a distance.

Actually a figure of 40,000 years has been used a lot. So it's not quite as bad as all that.


OK, I didn’t do the math, but even without doing the math, I’m sure that 40,000 years is nowhere near enough.

Any mathematicians or astronomers around? A lazy google yields the following:
First of all, a light-year is the distance light travels in one year. The star Alpha Centauri is about 4 light-years away, so light from Alpha Centauri takes 4 years to get to the Earth.

Now, if we wanted to travel to Alpha Centauri, we would have to know how fast our spaceship is travelling. The fastest rockets move at about 20,000 mph. Suppose we launch one at 20,000 miles per hour toward Alpha Centauri. How long would it take to get there?

Well, distance travelled equals speed times time, so the time it takes to travel a distance is that distance divided by the speed, or

4 light-years / (20,000 miles / hour)

Now this isn't terribly illuminating. We need to convert units so that we can do the division. There are 6 trillion miles in a light-year (approximately), so the distance we need to go is 6 trillion miles / light-year times 4 light-years, or 24 trillion miles. So, this trip would take 1.2 billion hours. There are 24 hours a day and 365.25 days per year, so this time in years is 137 thousand years.
The NASA research team has postulated that their findings could reduce the energy requirements for a spaceship moving at ten times the speed of light
:rolling:

Even those not well-versed in physics ought to understand why this is funny.
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Re: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

Post by Norwegian »

Better to look at faster alternatives to normal rockets than thinking about the travel time of those right now. Warp drives are still only something smart heads are doing theoretical and hypothetical thinking about. But there are other alternatives which are more realistic right now, such as solar sails (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail).

Then we have Proxima Centauri, 4.25 LY away: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri
Interstellar travel
Because of the star's proximity to Earth, Proxima Centauri has been proposed as a flyby destination for interstellar travel.[98] Proxima currently moves toward Earth at a rate of 22.2 km/s.[8] After 26,700 years, when it will come within 3.11 light-years, it will begin to move farther away.[67]

If non-nuclear, conventional propulsion technologies are used, the flight of a spacecraft to a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri would probably require thousands of years.[99] For example, Voyager 1, which is now travelling 17 km/s (38,000 mph)[100] relative to the Sun, would reach Proxima in 73,775 years, were the spacecraft travelling in the direction of that star. A slow-moving probe would have only several tens of thousands of years to catch Proxima Centauri near its closest approach, and could end up watching it recede into the distance.[101]

Nuclear pulse propulsion might enable such interstellar travel with a trip timescale of a century, inspiring several studies such as Project Orion, Project Daedalus, and Project Longshot.[101]

Project Breakthrough Starshot aims to reach the Alpha Centauri system within the first half of the 21st century, with microprobes travelling at twenty percent of the speed of light propelled by around 100 gigawatts of Earth-based lasers.[102] The probes will perform a fly-by of Proxima Centauri to take photos and collect data of its planet's atmospheric composition. It will take 4.22 years for the information collected to be sent back to Earth.[103]
And what is Project Breakthrough Starshot? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot
Breakthrough Starshot is a research and engineering project by the Breakthrough Initiatives to develop a proof-of-concept fleet of light sail spacecraft named StarChip,[1] to be capable of making the journey to the Alpha Centauri star system 4.37 light-years away.

A flyby mission has been proposed to Proxima Centauri b, an Earth-sized exoplanet in the habitable zone of its host star, Proxima Centauri, in the Alpha Centauri system.[2] At a speed between 15% and 20% of the speed of light,[3][4][5][6] it would take between twenty and thirty years to complete the journey, and approximately four years for a return message from the starship to Earth.
A little more about this potential solution: https://cosmosmagazine.com/physics/how- ... d-of-light

That is more feasible to achieve right now than warp drives, and it would be immensely fast compared to standard propulsion. Even so I think if that is built, it'd likely be drones first, before we get manned flights.
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Re: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

Post by Simon E. »

And if we do all that will we travel faster than dukkha?
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Re: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

Post by Grigoris »

Simon E. wrote: Wed Mar 07, 2018 11:14 am And if we do all that will we travel faster than dukkha?
How fast does dukkha travel? Pretty bloody fast I imagine!
"My religion is not deceiving myself."
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"Butchers, prostitutes, those guilty of the five most heinous crimes, outcasts, the underprivileged: all are utterly the substance of existence and nothing other than total bliss."
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Re: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

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Simon E. wrote: Wed Mar 07, 2018 11:14 am And if we do all that will we travel faster than dukkha?
It might help us to eventually make this world into a pure land. And we might meet new, intelligent lifeforms.

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Re: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

Post by Simon E. »

I think it (dukkha) would already be there waiting for us... :smile:
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Re: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

Post by Simon E. »

The Cicada wrote: Wed Mar 07, 2018 11:44 am
Simon E. wrote: Wed Mar 07, 2018 11:14 am And if we do all that will we travel faster than dukkha?
It might help us to eventually make this world into a pure land. And we might meet new, intelligent lifeforms.

I strongly suspect that the Three Marks are not a localised phenonomena..but are characteristic of all sentient life.
And intelligence is irrelevant in terms of the Three Marks.
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Re: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

Post by Yavana »

Simon E. wrote: Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:51 pm I strongly suspect that the Three Marks are not a localised phenonomena..but are characteristic of all sentient life.
And intelligence is irrelevant in terms of the Three Marks.
I assumed just that. But maybe a bit more space and resources can stave off the worst of that prediction about the Dharma Ending Age—and a number of other things.. Best case scenario.
Simon E. wrote: Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:28 pm I think it (dukkha) would already be there waiting for us... :smile:
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