new habitable planet

[ericg]

in the libra system. new life? check it out if you haven't already.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100929/ap_on_sc/us_sci_new_earths

[Adam]

yeah, I read about this other day. Haven't clicked that link but 20 light years away, it doesn't spin and a year takes 34 days if I remember right.

Its pretty cold though, averaging around minus 15 C ? You'd have to live on the line of where its always sunset I think so you could move out into the relative heat with crops.

Not in our life time but its good we are finding other places to fuck up. But currently technology would take us about 400,000 years to get there. I still think the best option would be to fix this one.

[ericg]

word, fix this one!
..yeah you should read it.
it sed it would take a few generations to get there, but still...
with life span tech achievements (www.fantastic-voyage.net) we can live forever and still get there.

[kaiser soze]

I still think it's a good idea to keep interested in this inhabitable planet

One thing that I've always been curious about - how the fuck do we really if a planet is inhabitable or not. It's not like any of us can take a flight to Mars or any other planet. I wouldn't be surprised if other planet's have species that evolved to the environments inherent on that planet. We have seen some extraordinary evolutionary traits on our own planet, why couldn't these take place on planets we deem inhabitable for humans?

People seem to forget how adaptable life really is.

[Adam]

I wish they'd more specific with "a couple of generations".

Reason I said 400,000 years is because according to google light travels 9,454,254,955,488 Km per year. Spacecraft travels at around 50,000 Km per hour which is 438,000,000 Km per year so it'd take about 21000 years to travel 1 light year. So decided the sum: 20 light years by 20 thousand Km (20x20) = 400 thousand years. Which is not a couple of generations.

I've been known to get math epically wrong on this forum before and HAL normally comes in with setting it all right. ;-)

[checkyourprez]

I still think it's a good idea to keep interested in this inhabitable planet

One thing that I've always been curious about - how the fuck do we really if a planet is inhabitable or not. It's not like any of us can take a flight to Mars or any other planet. I wouldn't be surprised if other planet's have species that evolved to the environments inherent on that planet. We have seen some extraordinary evolutionary traits on our own planet, why couldn't these take place on planets we deem inhabitable for humans?

People seem to forget how adaptable life really is.

well i think they just look at it in terms of life as we know it. in terms of habitable temperatures and the possibility for water to exist.

but i get what your saying, and i do agree a bit. we restrict "life" to only being possible in certain scenarios. just because some things are toxic to us here why does that mean it must hold true for the universe over?


i remember reading about some sort of organism that was growing (dont quote me on exactly this, but its something close to it) on vents under the ocean that release toxic gas, poisonous to most species. something like this (and possibly much more complex organisms) could thrive on other planets unlike ours.

[MC Moot]

I'm not compatible with Libra...everyone romantacizes Mars but I'm looking at a nice gaseous plot on Venus...(y)

[ericg]

well lest we remember that life on this planet probably came from somewhere else ie. meteorites that brought water to this planet in the first place etc.

that's funny mc moot.

[checkyourprez]

well lest we remember that life on this planet probably came from somewhere else ie. meteorites that brought water to this planet in the first place etc.

that's funny mc moot.


they may have brought organisms here (they also may not have), but they didnt bring the water here.

[kaiser soze]

no

it came from GOD

[checkyourprez]

no

it came from GOD

shit, i think i got that one wrong on the religion quiz.

[kaiser soze]

o rly? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLrpBLDWyCI)

[Adam]

From my understanding, the origin of life is not known. There are theories and one of those is god, others are meteorites, others are space ships.

Most likely (in my opinion) is some sort of chemical reaction. We know water needs to exist before life can so the earth would have to be less than 100 degrees C which didn't happen for a long time in earths early history. Like ericg said, a combination of meteorites and comets could of brought the necessary chemicals with it to either help cool the earth or give it the right chemicals. It didn't physically bring the water, some with hydrogen and oxygen on them would of eventually done it, or they may of already been here in gases. I'm not sure if we know why the earth cooled in the first place. I assume, the creation of the modern atmosphere keeping out the suns rays and keeping in the good stuff did it.

Once we have the first oceans and lots of chemical reactions from the atmosphere and from the earths core at some point molecules became a cell and then a cell duplicated. We now have life. This spark could of been god, it could of been lightening, it could of been ET.

Darwin had the soup theory, like a perfect storm of acids and proteins in a small pool that gave the first chemical reaction for life. Which I think is most plausible.

So for this planet to be habitable we need to assume similar conditions that happened on earth happened/happening on this planet. We also need to assume life exists or did exist or is about to exist on this planet to. What are the moral implications of this? Our history is less than peaceful, we have to assume they'll be hostile to, so do we go in treating them as such. If there are nothing more than small cell organisms, do we destroy that planet before it has a chance? If it did once had intelligent beings there, where are they now or what happened to them?

Having said all that, it can only help sending a probe in that direction. Best case scenario, they also sent a probe our way and they'll meet half way and exchange data or we see some sort of signal the closer we get. Even if its a friendly warning from them to stay away or we're coming after you, at least we know.

[ericg]

they may have brought organisms here (they also may not have), but they didnt bring the water here.

i think adam explained it best.

[kaiser soze]

Even though the planet is within the Goldie Locks zone considered for possible life - The star it orbits is a red dwarf, and I'm guessing the composition of the energy, heat, types of light waves, radiation, and electromagnetism would also play a part in the evolution of organisms on the the planet.

[Adam]

^Very true. We adapted to live as comfortable as we do now. If our planet didn't spin like that one I imagine they'd be one lot of darkies and one lot of lighties, both adapted to where they live. Cross breeding on the sunset/sunrise parts which'd probably appear in the most porn to suit both fetishes.

I really think that other life exists. The fact we do should prove it unless you believe in the divine. The chances of just one accident equaling life in the whole universe is too far fetched.

I really do find all this fascinating. This and Artificial Life/Intelligence.

[checkyourprez]

o rly? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLrpBLDWyCI)


what the hell are you going on about

[HAL 9000]

Reason I said 400,000 years is because according to google light travels 9,454,254,955,488 Km per year. Spacecraft travels at around 50,000 Km per hour which is 438,000,000 Km per year so it'd take about 21000 years to travel 1 light year. So decided the sum: 20 light years by 20 thousand Km (20x20) = 400 thousand years. Which is not a couple of generations.

I've been known to get math epically wrong on this forum before and HAL normally comes in with setting it all right. ;-)

I think you numbers are correct! However, there are a couple of things to be aware of, I think some space probes (for example the Helios probes) reached around 250,000km/h in the 70s, and I think the New Horizons probe, currently on route to Pluto is pretty damn fast too.

The main thing here though is that, if one was travelling into deep space, one would use a slow accelerating Ion drive engine, basically you accelerate slowly but surely until you are going at a significant portion of the speed of light. The beauty of space travel outside of a planet’s gravity well is that the upper limits for speed are very very high indeed, if you have enough time to accelerate with a low fuel engine (you need low fuel because otherwise you need to accelerate the mass of the fuel as well as the ship).

The other thing to be aware of is that once you start reaching a speed that is a significant portion of the speed of light, time dilation effects come in, and you will experience time differently on the ship compared to on Earth. So if you travelled at 90% of the speed of light, you might reach a planet 100 light years away in 50 years in terms of time observed by the astronauts on board, but when they got there and tried to communicate with the Earth, they would find that humanity had died out hundreds of thousands of years ago. The universe is a weird place.

So there is no reason why we could not build a ship which spent 30 years accelerating to 50% speed of light – 40 years cruising along and then 30 years decelerating and it could get there (slowing down would be the hardest part). So maybe the thing journey could be done in 100 years or so with technology that could be available in thhe next century or so. It would just have to be a probe at this point. The problem is, 10 years later, you might find that you can build a better probe for less money that can make the journey in 70 years – so it would overtake the first probe, so it always seems to make sense to wait with things like this.

[kaiser soze]

it would suck if we traveled these kind of distances only to discover the star had burned out millions of years ago

[Adam]

I told you HAL would come in making sense of it all! hehe ty

You are right, I forgot about the constant acceleration method you can do, but how do you start to slow down? That must take some epic energy.

You could be always waiting for the next generation of technology while missing another window to use what we have now, so what if it over takes, we might get a signal or find something else out a long the way.

If I had my way of spending the worlds money, it'd be less on securing oil reserves and more on sending probes in as many directions out into space as possible, science at CERN et al and creating as much energy you can from the ocean, wind, sunshine and anything else that is natural. I'd also make sure the whole world has the web. Even just off mobile phones, people being able to get information is a way for species to now evolve now.

[HAL 9000]

You are right, I forgot about the constant acceleration method you can do, but how do you start to slow down? That must take some epic energy.



Indeed it would but I suppose it should take slightly less energy than the acceleration phase because the probe would lose mass over its journey so the energy required to slow down should be a little less than to accelerate in the first place.


it would suck if we traveled these kind of distances only to discover the star had burned out millions of years ago

To note, this star is 'only' 20 light years away so worst case scenario it burned out 20 years ago.

btw in my view the chances of this planet having life let alone intelligent life is fanishingly small. We dont even know it is inhabitable, all we know is that, there could be liquid water in some places on the surface. I think the really exciting thing about this discovery is that it suggests that Earthlike planets are commonplace in the universe, ie we have the technology to examine two stars for Earth like planets and both test postivie (our star and this new one).

However, my own opinion, which is pure conjecture, is that life and intelligent life in particular is very rare in the universe. For example, I would bet that we are the only species i our galaxy capable of space travel. Which is sad, but I reckon probably true. Would love to be proved wrong though.

[Planetary]

god's not so much a theory as it is a farfetched story

[ericg]

To note, this star is 'only' 20 light years away so worst case scenario it burned out 20 years ago.

"The low-energy dwarf star will live on for billions of years, much longer than our sun, he said. And that just increases the likelihood of life developing on the planet, the discoverers said."