Scientists find "possibly habitable" distant planet

[dman]

I wonder what the scientists on that planet would calculate the temperature on MARS to be based on the size of our sun and it's perceived distance from it? I'm just guessing that Mars probably looks like a reasonably hospitable planet from 20LY away.

That said, It's still cool information. That is, until we see the colony and war ships heading towards us that left 19.9years ago at the speed of light.

 

[gerwen]

Originally posted by: silverpig

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: silverpig
Put some sort of ion drive on a probe. Launch said probe. It could go at around .5c top speed. Give it say 50 years to get there, 20 years to laser beam data back and we're looking maybe 85 years before we see close up pictures of this thing if we start today.

Think of that. 85 years from now we could be looking at pictures from a planet like earth in another solar system.

"Ever since man first looked up to the heavens he has dreamed about making it with some hot alien babe." -Zap Brannigan.

Factor in the time it takes for that ion drive to accelerate to 0.5C, and then the time to decelerate so that it catches something more than a passing blur. I'm sure generations in several tens of thousands of years will receive the pictures.

I gave it 10 years extra for acceleration, and then padded it with another 15 years for good measure. Of course most of that would be taken up with production. The deceleration I just neglected. We want pictures and fast

If we were going to do accel + decel + 20 yrs for data + 15 yrs to build it'd be more like 125 yrs. Still pretty cool if you think about it.

Of course by then we could probably build something faster and pass it on the way there.

Pretty damn good estimate, i did the calculations.

Accelerating to at 1g, to a max speed of .5c, the trip would take 48.3 years.

I used 1g for acceleration, because it would be comfortable for us. Who knows what the limitations on acceleration would be if it was unmanned, but pumping it up to 5g only drops the travel time to 43.8 years.

If you could get to .5c, why not faster? I don't know how fast you can go and still ignore relativistic effects, but how about .9c? 30.2 years to get there with a 1g acceleration and max speed of .9c

This ignores all relativistic effects, which i'm off to look up to satisfy my own curiosity.

 

[Toastedlightly]

Originally posted by: KarmaPolice
20.5 light years away and thats just not possible to get to at the moment. In order to get there we will need some serious research in physics and figure out how to either push something to the speed of light or even sling it around a planet or something. I think half the speed of light is what some physics people think is attainable and that would take 40 years to get there and 40 years back....

but traveling at that speed, would time not go slower for you? (not sure about the half speed thing).

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: paulxcook
There's no guarantee this planet even exists anymore.

Uhhh, I doubt much would have happened in 20 years.

pesky little planet was in the planned route for an interstellar freeway, and it had to be demolished? that wouldn't take long. could have happened even in 1988 and we just don't know it yet. we will next year though.

 

[zoiks]

Great. Now lets ship out all the republicans there.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: FoBoT
isn't 20.5 LY relatively close? how many solar systems are within 25 LY's of us?

Yes. About 100, like the article said. The freeware star-browsing software Celestia refers to Gliese 581 as Wolf 562.


I speculate that life in the universe is pretty much everywhere. OTOH, intelligent life that we will be capable of communicating with I fear is quite rare.

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: zoiks
Great. Now lets ship out all the republicans there.

howabout all the liberal and conservative nuts?
moderation is key, so, moderation of your intake of politics is a good thing, thus so is being a moderate

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself
LOL I cant believe there are so many skeptics here... Of course we will make it there, and it wont take long

I bet people in 1900 laughed at the idea of going to outer space, or having satellites around earth, and now its been done... Science always advanced faster than you would think, so never say "never"

Uhh... there are more serious issues involved in interstellar travel than our (in relative comparison) little piddling hop to the moon a mere 250k miles away or those satellites we put up in orbit around our planet. I'm not saying "never" but in order for interstellar travel to occur, we're either going to have to content ourselves with one-way voyages that take generations, or our understanding of the universe is going to have change so that deep-rooted physical laws, like those discovered by Newton and Einstein, are made to change.

The way I say it (when this subject comes up) is like this: we will go to the stars when we learn how to make "up" into "down." Meaning, when we learn how to control gravity.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: zoiks
Great. Now lets ship out all the republicans there.

I think that an endeavor of this magnitude is going to require that we put aside our little stupid petty rivalries and finally learn to get along and work with each other. But that's just me.

 

[ABitTooSpicy]

Text

... At the pace set by our own Pathfinder spacecraft on its recent trip to Mars -- 212 days to travel 309 million miles -- it would take us 225,564 years to travel between Earth and "Gliese 581c." One way...

 

[Skotty]

Originally posted by: ABitTooSpicy
Text

... At the pace set by our own Pathfinder spacecraft on its recent trip to Mars -- 212 days to travel 309 million miles -- it would take us 225,564 years to travel between Earth and "Gliese 581c." One way...

Just imagine if you were driving your car there.

 

[Oscar1613]

Originally posted by: Oscar1613
according to this site, the fastest exit velocity (of the solar system) is Voyager 1 at 38,600 mph, which means it would take 152,292,746 years to go 1 light year or 3,045,854,922 years to travel the 20 light years to this planet

man i dont know what i was doing last night, but i must've missed a decimal or two... the actual number is 356,392 years for the 20.5 light years, not 3 billion or 17,385 years for one light year

 

[dainthomas]

Originally posted by: FoBoT

Originally posted by: Skotty
... unless of course, it runs on organic lettuce.

Mr. Fusion runs on organic lettuce



but it might take a few tons of it to make that trip

A real "Mr. Fusion" wouldn't need much at all (assuming a high efficiency rate). There would only be two limitations at that point, the speed of light and the level of acceleration that would turn the passengers into piles of goo.

 

[IGBT]

..we need to get up there a drill for oil.

 

[Qianglong]

where is darth vader's SSD when we most need it????

 

[AMCRambler]

They gotta invent an engine that will produce light speed now so we can get there. We should probably just pace ourselves and shoot for Mars first.

 

[NanoStuff]

Originally posted by: AMCRambler
They gotta invent an engine that will produce light speed now so we can get there. We should probably just pace ourselves and shoot for Mars first.

I don't know where you've been for the past decade, but we've already sent a number of explorers to mars.

 

[Fritzo]

At 5 times the mass of the earth, if anything lived there would most likely be "crawlers" due to the intense gravity. The beings would also be very strong and sturdy. How 'bout that?

 

[So]

Originally posted by: Fritzo
At 5 times the mass of the earth, if anything lived there would most likely be "crawlers" due to the intense gravity. The beings would also be very strong and sturdy. How 'bout that?

So we'll have to invent bigger hunting rifles?

 

[So]

Originally posted by: dman
I wonder what the scientists on that planet would calculate the temperature on MARS to be based on the size of our sun and it's perceived distance from it? I'm just guessing that Mars probably looks like a reasonably hospitable planet from 20LY away.

That said, It's still cool information. That is, until we see the colony and war ships heading towards us that left 19.9years ago at the speed of light.

Mars is pretty habitable. I mean, we could, with current technology build a self sustaining colony. The hard part is getting the stuff to build it over there. Same for Venus, which would be the perfect home for a "cloud city" but we can't afford to send people there...yet.

 

[Kirby64]

Originally posted by: NanoStuff

Originally posted by: AMCRambler
They gotta invent an engine that will produce light speed now so we can get there. We should probably just pace ourselves and shoot for Mars first.

I don't know where you've been for the past decade, but we've already sent a number of explorers to mars.

Maybe he's talking about actual humans visiting Mars?

 

[NanoStuff]

Originally posted by: Kirby64

Originally posted by: NanoStuff

Originally posted by: AMCRambler
They gotta invent an engine that will produce light speed now so we can get there. We should probably just pace ourselves and shoot for Mars first.

I don't know where you've been for the past decade, but we've already sent a number of explorers to mars.

Maybe he's talking about actual humans visiting Mars?

That would be a stupid thing to do. Not nearly as stupid as sending humans 20 light years from here, but stupid enough.

 

[hanoverphist]

Originally posted by: toolboxolio

Originally posted by: FoBoT

Originally posted by: Jgtdragon
my question is how many years is one light year?!?!

uh, one?

As an alcoholic with a health conscience.... I DISAGREE.

Based on the law of beer, a light beer is crap tons less than the same brand of beer without the "light" adjective added to it's title.

So in conclusion, a "light year" is totally closer than a "year."

This planet the report talks about is probably closer than the moon.....

I think they are talking about the north pole.

aahh, the theory of relativity. gotcha!

 

[angminas]

"It's 20 lightyears away - but still close to Earth"

:laugh:

Story

 

[Superself]

Originally posted by: silverpig
Put some sort of ion drive on a probe. Launch said probe. It could go at around .5c top speed. Give it say 50 years to get there, 20 years to laser beam data back and we're looking maybe 85 years before we see close up pictures of this thing if we start today.

Think of that. 85 years from now we could be looking at pictures from a planet like earth in another solar system.

"Ever since man first looked up to the heavens he has dreamed about making it with some hot alien babe." -Zap Brannigan.

Better launch more than one!