New Earths right around the corner?

[ToughGirl]

To my knowledge, these planets are discovered by measuring their gravity pull on their suns, in the form of a 'wobble'. When the planet orbits the sun it pulls it just slightly, and that slight wobble is measurable. But the planets that make a sun wobble are enormous, more like the size of Jupiter than the Earth. With that kind of size, the gravity would be too intense for life, humans would weigh around 1800-2500lbs. Maybe that's why they numbered them a bit higher, anticipating smaller, Earth type planets closer to their sun, but unmeasurable by the wobble technique at our distance.

I'm curious about the 'New Horizons' space probe. It will be in Pluto's orbit in 2015 and has amazing tech on it, could give us a better look at what's out there since it's so dark and far away in that area of space (beyond the Kuiper belt). We may still have uninhabitable planets in our own solar system that we haven't been able to see via the Hubble or landbased telescopes, let alone the billions of other planets beyond our reach.

Makes you feel kind of small doesn't it? Like a grain of sand on an endless beach.

-Igrowone, there are more radical forms of propulsion, such as Ion engines. the problem is that engineers are scared to incorporate them into their billion dollar space craft without solid testing. After the disaster(s) on Mars back around 2001'ish, they are being scrutinized to death to ensure they don't blow anything up or smash into something and waste another billion dollars. I think there are amazing ideas out there, theoretically sound, but untested. How sad that we think bombing deserts for oil is so much more important in the grand scheme of things. Silly humans...

 

[igrowone]

To my knowledge, these planets are discovered by measuring their gravity pull on their suns, in the form of a 'wobble'. When the planet orbits the sun it pulls it just slightly, and that slight wobble is measurable. But the planets that make a sun wobble are enormous, more like the size of Jupiter than the Earth. With that kind of size, the gravity would be too intense for life, humans would weigh around 1800-2500lbs. Maybe that's why they numbered them a bit higher, anticipating smaller, Earth type planets closer to their sun, but unmeasurable by the wobble technique at our distance.

OP was talking about the Kepler space based telescope
just being put into operation
it's based on reduced luminosity from a star when a planet occludes some of the light
really exciting, supposed to be able to detect much smaller planets than the wobble technique
its limitation is plant and star must align, not all planets/stars are going to do this

 

[ToughGirl]

OP was talking about the Kepler space based telescope
just being put into operation
it's based on reduced luminosity from a star when a planet occludes some of the light
really exciting, supposed to be able to detect much smaller planets than the wobble technique
its limitation is plant and star must align, not all planets/stars are going to do this

That's the problem, isn't it? Not only do they have to align, we have to see that alignment from our 'angle' (like a flat plain to my knowledge) at the exact moment it eclipses the star. So many variables to go wrong. It's superfluous anyway. It's like being on a deserted island, what good is it to know that civilization is only 3000 miles away if you don't have a boat? We're stuck here with 6 billion idiots, fighting over oil or an invisible man in the sky. We don't deserve 'warp' drive, if we had it we would abuse it anyway.

 

[igrowone]

That's the problem, isn't it? Not only do they have to align, we have to see that alignment from our 'angle' (like a flat plain to my knowledge) at the exact moment it eclipses the star. So many variables to go wrong. It's superfluous anyway. It's like being on a deserted island, what good is it to know that civilization is only 3000 miles away if you don't have a boat? We're stuck here with 6 billion idiots, fighting over oil or an invisible man in the sky. We don't deserve 'warp' drive, if we had it we would abuse it anyway.

thanks for the good feedback toughgirl, good to have posts appreciated
and for the moment, planet detection may not have big practical consequences, not to most people anyways
i don't think we're traveling anywhere that far for a long time, if ever
still, big discoveries do pop up from time to time, can't be predicted

 

[Dr Dog]

To my knowledge, these planets are discovered by measuring their gravity pull on their suns, in the form of a 'wobble'. When the planet orbits the sun it pulls it just slightly, and that slight wobble is measurable. But the planets that make a sun wobble are enormous, more like the size of Jupiter than the Earth. With that kind of size, the gravity would be too intense for life, humans would weigh around 1800-2500lbs. Maybe that's why they numbered them a bit higher, anticipating smaller, Earth type planets closer to their sun, but unmeasurable by the wobble technique at our distance.

I'm curious about the 'New Horizons' space probe. It will be in Pluto's orbit in 2015 and has amazing tech on it, could give us a better look at what's out there since it's so dark and far away in that area of space (beyond the Kuiper belt). We may still have uninhabitable planets in our own solar system that we haven't been able to see via the Hubble or landbased telescopes, let alone the billions of other planets beyond our reach.

That they look for "dimming" of a stars light as well, that gives them an idea to even look there.


I find it interesting that humans even think we matter in the grand scheme of things

 

[Space Toker]

A group of dedicated billionaires could do it, the only good thing about concentrated wealth is it may allow something like this if they could unite and get behind something like this. Bill Gates is a tech guy, so I'm kind of surprised he isn't funding his own mission to Mars!

Governments have even more concentrated funds at their disposal, but the budgets change, things get axed and new things get funded only to also get axed, a new president goes in a completely different direction... there is so much wasted time, effort, and money. And yet if they could somehow get steady revenue that isn't subject to constant fluctuations, and if they used those funds to pay competing private companies to build things, this could become a reality.

Business alone won't do it as they are only interested in profit and most won't touch space because the potential revenues, while vast, are well into the future and require continued investment with lots of uncertainty. Government can't do it all itself because they pay millions for a custom designed toilet instead of mass producing what they need with the aid of private business.

It needs to be a blend of both wealthy individuals, upstart and established businesses, and government to get it done I believe. They could even save a lot of money building 10 or 20 standardized and generalized space probes at once rather than just one, and then sending them to different places for different purposes. Yes I am sad they cancelled that breakthrough propulsion program, I think they did so years ago but it still hurts.

NASA should be all about developing new technology and leave the easier to do, established stuff like shuttle launches to private firms. It can be done, and hopefully they will see that becoming a truly spacefaring species is the only way we have a future long-term. If we remain in our cradle forever, some disaster could wipe us all out, or we will just stagnate and wither away forgotten and like we never existed. We can and we must explore and settle space: orbital habitats, settlements and research stations on every possible object in the solar system, and a vigorous research program to develop cutting-edge telescopes and propulsion systems. If we aren't living around at least the 50 nearest suitable stars by 2525, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.

oh interesting link:

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1002/

 

[Space Toker]

It would just be easier to fold space.

Isn't that what warp drive is? Traveling in a bubble of warped spacetime by compressing (folding) space ahead of you and expanding it in your wake? yeah I think so.

 

[Space Toker]

yes Kepler depends on chance transits, in other words the planet has to be lined up from our point of view, line of sight or whatever. Still it will study hundreds of thousands of stars and I knew they speculated that it could find hundred of Earth-like planets even at that! and if discovered, that should spur interest and therefore funding for getting there. I think humanity would mature as a species if we settled space and therefore were FORCED get along and cooperate instead of compete. There just isn't any other choice in space, it could ween us off our materialistic dependence on wealth and power and take our civilization to the "next level", and then we would matter in the grand scheme of the galaxy and we could join the galactic community and make our existence up to now look like mere child's play.

 

[sparkjumper]

Stephen Hawkins and most other brilliant folk say the best we could hope for is subjugation or being made pets.

 

[Telly3000]

Stephen Hawkins and most other brilliant folk say the best we could hope for is subjugation or being made pets.

If the aliens think the same way as us, and are into little raping and pillaging other cultures, hopefully they will be just a bit more intellectually advanced then that.

 

[igrowone]

thread still kicking? here's one more for the mix
if we are stuck in a 'einstein universe', and we probably are(no faster than light drives), what do you do
people getting into ships, then off to the stars?
i saw one analysis of the raw energy cost of just accelerating 1 ton of mass to near light speed
about a trillion dollars, this amount of energy well exceeds the world's total energy budget for a year
this doesn't include the cost of decelerating, in which case you are talking real money
not to mention the cost of technology development, construction, etc.
so what do you do? if you can't go standard rates, you need economy
some have proposed nanogram scale space probes, launched as a swarm
if biology technology continues to proceed, you can build people from 'the ground up' on a new planet
not really what most us had in mind after years of star trek, but it does bring energy costs down to a reasonable budget

 

[Space Toker]

Warp drive and other methods of "folding space" do exactly that. No you cannot travel through space between two objects faster than the speed of light, but you can cheat if you manipulate the fabric of space by folding the space between two points as to create a shortcut. There are many possible methods for getting to parallel universes, other physical universes beyond the "visible universe", and other distant points in space, pretty much anywhere in fact. You just have to create a short cut. It is theoretically very possible and will be done someday or so I hope, and civilizations more advanced than us probably are already doing it. Yes the amount of energy needed would be large, but by perfecting antimatter drives or other very possible technologies, it is not beyond belief at all.

And sparkjumper (I was ready to call you sparkhumper ): I wouldn't mind being their pet if I was a well treated one who got to explore other galaxies! I think they would be more advanced intellectually though and would be not into all that subjugation junk.

 

[igrowone]

Warp drive and other methods of "folding space" do exactly that. No you cannot travel through space between two objects faster than the speed of light, but you can cheat if you manipulate the fabric of space by folding the space between two points as to create a shortcut. There are many possible methods for getting to parallel universes, other physical universes beyond the "visible universe", and other distant points in space, pretty much anywhere in fact. You just have to create a short cut. It is theoretically very possible and will be done someday or so I hope, and civilizations more advanced than us probably are already doing it. Yes the amount of energy needed would be large, but by perfecting antimatter drives or other very possible technologies, it is not beyond belief at all.

just keeping with the 'einstein universe' theme, the other ideas are interesting, they may or may not ever result in real systems
antimatter is a known thing, we've been producing it for a while
tiny amounts of course
but when you think of the vast energy needed, think what this have to mean for life back on earth
we would need to able generate vast amounts of energy before this is remotely practical
like 1/1000 of a cent for a kilowatt hour
maybe it will possible one day, but if you can do that, star travel becomes small news(relatively)
it's how it affects life here that would be huge

 

[mpd]

Great thread. My wife is scared to death of watching The Universe and the other cable shows about the great galactic beyond. I can't get enough of it. When I retire I'm going to get a PhD in physics and chase Einstein and all these other theoretical physicists around the cosmos.

Of course there is life out there. It's not mathematically possible for it to not be there. Any first-year statistics class in college will demonstrate that it is only our own hubris that has resulted in our lack of appreciation of other civilizations from other worlds.

I didn't need an appreciation of mathematics to realize this, but I didn't need to be abducted by aliens to figure it out either.

I think we will get to more advanced forms of propulsion within the next few decades. Fusion is where it is going to happen. Something to do with fusion, matter, anti-matter and understanding gravity's relationship to light. We'll work it all out; that's just engineering. I think the experiments they are doing at CERN in Switzerland will end up taking engineers in a new direction and the benefits will snowball just as they did with powered flight 100 years ago. I mean we have already come a long way in just a 100 years. If we don't blow ourselves to kingdom come in the meantime, there is no reason why we can't make this work. It will be excellent to behold. Space travel is going to be fun.

As long as they don't lose the luggage, it will all be good.

 

[igrowone]

hey mpd, like your optimism, and your goals, been toying with the idea of doing some physics learning myself
if you want to see the most cutting edge technology on fusion, read up on AIM
this is Antimatter Induced Microfusion
this is one the favorites for an improved space drive in the near future(50 years or so)
idea is small amount of antimatter bombards a tiny hydrogen fuel pellet(deuterium and tritium) to create a small nuclear impulse
this lets you get a lot of use from a small amount of antimatter
not quite a star drive, but an order of magnitude beyond anything around today

 

[Guest 88950]

... Bill Gates is a tech guy, so I'm kind of surprised he isn't funding his own mission to Mars!...

oh interesting link:

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1002/

microsoft co-founder paul allen funded burt rutan and his design of a single stage to orbit craft and later joined by richard branson and they won the x prize.

eliminate 1/2 of nasa's funding and put it into the private sector, space and science research, and partner with innovative people like burt rutan and the money put in will pay bigger dividens than funds squandered by nasa.

organizations like nasa are too structured and set in their ways to be on the forefront of innovation. why else is the shuttle fleet still being used?

 

[Space Toker]

mpd: thanks, and great post! Love the optimism and grounded in reality as well. SSH, well that is promising but Bill Gates has or had enough to fund a mission all by himself. I hope we can have people living on Mars and elsewhere ASAP, I should see the year 2050 but who knows beyond that. I hope it happens before I am too senile to enjoy it!

 

[Space Toker]

I said it before but really great post mpd, please continue!

 

[hisser]

I hope good dope can be grown on newly discovered planets 8D

 

[Ganglere]

Smart tokers round here

Smart tokers round here

You guys impress me with your knowledge, without it we're all just rats in a maze...


But just let's think about it for a second. What are we going to do when we get there? Kill all the natives? Cut down the forests (or what passes for forests there)? Congest all bodies of water with waste?

And who would we send? Missionairies? Politicians? CEO's? Or maybe LEO, they might be getting high without permission on distant planets?


As the great thinkers of South Park said: These marklar has come to marklar to steal your marklar and rape all the little marklar. Then the marklar want all the marklar to believe in their marklar and if any marklar won't accept marklar then big marklars will be built to burn marklar................................................................



Fuck, if we can't save this planet, would it not be somewhat arrogant to start on the next?`

But really cool thread, mad speculation is the cousin of creativity. The cousin everybody dislike,but also the one that makes family gatherings fun

Keep'em coming

Peace, G