could or 100% does have life on it depends which article you read! Read these two headlines, I normally wouldn't click through to Fox but either they got very different pr or one of the two news services is making **** up. A distant Earth-like exoplanet 'could have life' Odds of Life on Nearby Planet '100 Percent,' Astronomer Says
As much as I try to keep a straight face reading all these things because it really is genuinely interesting to me, it's just hard to read articles about distant planets which purposeful use the juxtaposition of words such as "lightyears" and "nearby" to give readers the impression that these are planets which are actually within range of current or very near future space travel. It's really not fair to quote an astronomer using subjective descriptions of distance. Just so hard to read it without being cynical.
In all fairness to Fox, they're just re-posting an article from Space.com. The original article used the same headline. And to be fair to all the news sources, the professor did say it. Of course media outlets are going to run with it.
The New Scientist article on it is pretty in depth: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19519-found-first-rocky-exoplanet-that-could-host-life.html I'm just pissed off that you pesky earthlings have found my home world. You'll all be over here soon, with your shiny spaceships and loud music... KEEP OFF MY LAWN [ShakesFist]
i read this yesterday and did i read its 20 light years away? i think i have it right, that even if we could travel at the speed of light it would still take 20 years to get there?
IIRC i think a space ship would have to operate under the speed of light which could increase the time it takes to 23 to 30 years instead... Lets hope there's a way to get FTL travel by then.
+1Yay!!!! Peter F. Hamilton is awesome. Where did I leave my di-lithium crystals Like we will be able to get there in 90 years time of technological advances...
My money's on suspended animation being what gets us to other planets. We're painfully far from FTL or even near-light speed travel at the moment, whereas living creatures on this planet have already been reaching quasi-suspended animation in their natural habitats. Some bugs that live in ice live up around a hundred years. Just a matter of duplicating that, then getting ships which don't even have to travel very fast, merely last a long time.
Remember folks - 100% chance of a liveable planet != 100% chance of life. I think the professor was muddling his words when he said "100% chance of life". That or he's a dick. 20 ly means that light will take 20 years to get there. People can't travel at the speed of light, just ridiculously close to it given the right amounts of energy. It increases the time it could take to get there from 20.0...01 years to the rest of time. On a galactic scale 20 light years is the next street. To know there's a liveable planet so close is a real boon. The way to send someone there (assuming we can create a ship which can get to the significant fraction of LS you would need) would be suspended animation or a generation ship. The former could be the smaller size and get there quicker, but a generation ship would need to be much bigger and heavier. You wouldn't need to worry about defrosting folk at the other end though. Either ship you'd need some new form of propulsion though, one that didn't need to carry propellant with you. Solar sails maybe an answer in the local vicinity, but once you get into inter-stellar space it's near-useless (or so I think if I remember my cosmology correctly). Course it's all moot if someone finds a way of generating anti-gravitons reliably.
It's such a shame that Earth's space programmes are in such a sorry state. At the moment we'd struggle to get another man on the moon, let alone Mars or even a planet in another solar system! Don't get ahead of yourself; gravitons are still only theoretical particles, remember!
Don't worry I expect my new FTL will be ready for testing in the next 10 years or my names not Zefram Cochrane
True, true. Maybe I'm putting too much faith in one of my uni professors. He's convinced, and by proxy so am I.
I'm pretty much convinced they exist - there needs to be a boson for gravity. But think about the boson for the electromagnetic force; the anti-particle is itself. The anti-photon doesn't exist (or at least we don't think it does!) so there's no guarantee that there is an anti-graviton.
Off topic; has anyone read the new book, The Evolutionary Void? More on topic; CST needs to exist already! I want a train to another planet at once!
I don't feel that the question "Is there life outside of the tiny planet we call Earth" is a truly satisfying one. More to the point, "Why isn't there more life that we can detect" is a much more apt question, and one I feel to be more fulfilling. We know by way of our existence that life is not just possible, but is almost necessary insofar as a basic, water and nutrient-rich planet is concerned. So why then do we think of life being so rare as to almost not exist? I argue that we should go into the search for life with the assumption that life exists off-world, then try to explain why it might not wherever we are currently looking given our current understanding of biological and geological processes. While true that life outside of our narrow view of it may not be centred upon the same principals we enjoy (DNA, carbon, proteins, ect), there still exists a large entropy-debt on most other worlds, and life seems to be a reasonable way to solve such issues. Other ways are possible, but looking at ourselves indicates that organic, carbon-based life is the most efficient, direct, and fastest way to transport energy on a large scale. Don't be surprised at extraterrestrial life, be surprised at the lack thereof.
