AdelaideNow… New earth find suggests we are not alone — Does anyone else but me think that we should load up vials of frozen life forms and launch a missile at this planet to inoculate it? Or does anyone think that perhaps there are folks on this planet that did that to us? Or do I join the nutball club for thinking this way?
ASTRONOMERS have found a “new Earth” – the first planet outside our solar system with the potential for life as we know it.
The Earth-like planet is 20.5 light years away, orbiting the “red dwarf” star Gliese 581 in the constellation Libra.It is one of three planets in that solar system, with the Earth-like planet named Gliese 581C.
Commenting on the discovery by a team of European scientists, University of Adelaide Professor Roger Clay said this was the first time a planet with a mass or weight similar to the Earth’s had been found.
#30, Comment by F. — 4/26/2007 @ 12:58 am
Did you forget relativity? You’ll have to take the mass of the ship into account:
M = m(rest) / (1 – (V / c) ) ^ 2.5
To the nearest star:
Equation above results in less and less velocity change as the acceleration continues. By the time the acceleration has gotten you to 0.8c, the effective mass your motors are pushing against has grown to 1.7 times the rocket’s rest mass, and the gain in velocity is only about 1/2 as much per unit time. The best you can hope for is to get to the turn around point at about 0.5 c
That’s just to Alpha Centauri. I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to calculate the turnaround point to Gliese 581, some 5x further away.
To Alpha Centauri ( about 4 llght years): 8.4 years at 1G
I dont know if you are aware,
But there is an engine core they wish to test. It was made and designed many years ago. Its a hydrogen scoop.
It is estimated that it would take it 1 year to get to the outer reaches of our system, and at that Time would be doing About 1 Light year speed.
there are problems in testing this.
We have NO signal ability at that speed. We couldnt control it and it couldnt relay signals BACK fast enough.. And even if we could…TRY hitting something THAT far away with a laser.
WHICH we found out Dont work either, threw an atmosphere(our own planet) would desperse the signal. then the Van allen belt, has a tendancy to disturb radio and light signals Also..
Almost need to be on MARs, to do any good, and at that we would be out of position(1 year) to get a direct signal, even Then.
There is abit of math you may not Think about.
the sun is moving threw space,
The Earth is movint threw space, This makes it a twice moving object.
The Moon is moving through space, is a thrice moving object.
If you could STAND STILL, with no relation to Any object, you would see the System SCREAMING threw space, and you could stand there and Wiat for the next system to come along behind us. MAYBE. Like someone shooting at you in the Dark, with a Shot gun….and you Running like hell…
the ram scoop can work, but we would Never get a signal back…Until someone brought it Back, Stuck in their BOTTOM…
#31,
I thought of adding “If you can even reach full lightspeed as your mass increases to infinity at lightspeed”, but left it out as Infami wouldn’t be interested in that bit…
Let’s just say that my engine design is better then yours and corrects automatically for the increase in mass to keep the accelaration constant.
😉 😛
To an observer on Earth, a ship traveling at light speed (or close to it) would take some 20.8 years to get to Gliese 581. But due to relativity theory, the faster you travel, the slower time flows for you. So when the ship finally gets to Gliese 581, a lot less time would have passed for the travelers on the ship .
There is a way to compute how much time would pass for the travelers on the ship, but I don’t know what it is. Does anyone know?
Don’t forget — nothing is sitting still in space, either. Is that solar system moving closer or further from us every second? How fast?
Fire up the worm hole! It’s the quickest way there.
#3, Scott, is absolutely right. We don’t see travelers from our own future popping up at the local sports bar (John Titor notwithstanding) because the species goes extinct before we master the technology.
Or, maybe we survive and it’s just that time travel is a physical impossibility, but all that ‘speed of light as the ultimate speed limit’ stuff is true, which makes interstellar travel totally impractical and explains why we’re never visited by aliens from any of the millions (statistically speaking) of other inhabited planets that must be in the universe.
Or maybe #13, Mark, is right and we’re the most advanced and evolved life in the entire freaking universe.
In any case, I’m getting very depressed.
Two things – does anyone else think that other planet doesn’t even exist? That it is just the misunderstanding of some mathemetical calculations of over eager astonomers?
Also, John, why does it matter if they seeded us? It still doesn’t answer the question of where life began. I suppose if they seeded us and we found out then we would be one step closer to the original point where life spontaneously appeared.
#33, Comment by F. — 4/26/2007 @ 3:53 am
corrects automatically for the increase in mass to keep the accelaration [acceleration] constant.
Maintaining a constant 1G acceleration relative to the pilot (not the observer on Earth) is inherent in the calculations.
#32, Comment by ECA — 4/26/2007 @ 3:13 am
Perhaps you’re referring to the Bussard ramjet, and aiming it or communicating with such a device in flight is not one of the big problems. See here:
http://tinyurl.com/ynkq24
Does this means NASA will get the proper funding now? Not for the sake of science mind you, but instead to get preachers there to evangelize the natives.
36. “Or maybe #13, Mark, is right and we’re the most advanced and evolved life in the entire freaking universe.”
Actually, I am probably the only one here that believes we are not. In fact, we are probably one of the lowest forms of life in the Universe. Which is why if we were being visited, why would they want to converse with something on the order of an amoeba? Thus, no landings on the White House Lawn. Look where we were 100, 150 years ago, But hey we got electricity!
Does anyone else find the lack of understanding of basic physics and Special Relativity on this web site appalling?
41. No, I’m the dumbest guy in the room, explain it to me.
40, mark, we’ve got nukes, too. In a few hundred more years I’ll bet we can decimate our local arm of the Milky Way galaxy… that’ll show ’em.
39, Angel, oh Lord, say it ain’t so.
43. Another good reason to avoid earth like a plague. And people wonder why they dont give W a big Texas Howdy!
Mark, I found the perfect web site to teach you about Special Relativity.
P.S. To everyone else … if you learn how to use the anchor tag on this web site you don’t have to use TinyURL.
44, mark, you can tell just how smart the W is by how many World Series the Texas Rangers won while he owned the team. I’ll never forget the fan sitting behind him (just in front of me) in one game, who hollered “George — more pitching!!’ That message will reach Gliese 581 in approx. 10 years, since it was broadcast and heard quite clearly on national TV. No wonder no one wants to visit Earth, even if they could.
41, Improbus, lack of understanding of basic physics
We’re all in a blog room, after all. Wish I had time to work out #34’s question, I’ll leave it to you. I’m fishin’ for two more days, come on big bass !!
45. Thats two things I’ll have to learn today, my hair is starting to hurt.
46. Yeah, Texas scares the shit out of em….Dont mess
BubbaRay, I work for a living. I will leave it as an exercise for those that are curious. Just look up the equations and plug in the numbers.
The people of that planet have done nothing to us, why should we “inoculate” the little varmints? But don’t worry, in time Humanity will spread through the universe like a hell bent viral infection. Kind of like George and his bunch spreading their freaky little brand of “democracy”.
45. “P.S. To everyone else … if you learn how to use the anchor tag on this web site you don’t have to use TinyURL. ”
So I dont have time to learn physics today, I work too. But I am interested in the anchor tag tip, what is it?
Mark, if you look under the “Please leave a comment” at the end of the comments you will see the anchor example. Put the entire URL into the href quotes and put the anchor text (the text you want underlined for the link) in between the anchor tag and the close anchor tag.
Sheesh, right under my nose. Told you I was the dumbest guy in the room. Thanks.
#32 – Bussard ramjet? Yeah those are feasible, but the amount of radiation kicked back into the crew module would be ENORMOUS, and as such it would have to be unmanned.
You’ve raised a good point though – how would we communicate w/ such a probe? Surely the probe could communicate back with no problems, Earth is essentially a fixed point. The damn radio signals that we currently use are just too slow. We need some sort of hyper or FTL communications technology.
A few of you are getting the points…
Good..
The theory MAY have a flaw in it(einsteins)…AS there has been no way to Disprove it… If its SO…Then the Bussard jet WONT work, it would probably Explode with all the Extra fuel it Cant combust.
YOU CANT KNOW what will happen, totally…Until we DO it…
ECA your words cause cognitive dissonance in anyone trying to understand you. I think your brain may work on a different principle than most humans. You are from this planet, right?
If we send Earth life there, all we can succeed at doing is to lower the cumulative intelligence of the inhabited universe. Nobody would win.
The Drake Equation:
(this formula was dissed by guys like Michael Crichton as being bogus, having no data to plug into the variables… but look, it’s starting to get filled in! (albeit slowly, to be sure)
N = N* fp ne fl fi fc fL
The equation can really be looked at as a number of questions:
N* represents the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy
Question: How many stars are in the Milky Way Galaxy?
Answer: Current estimates are 100 billion.
fp: The fraction of stars that have planets around them
Question: What percentage of stars have planetary systems?
Answer: Current estimates range from 20% to 50%.
ne: The number of planets per star that are capable of sustaining life
Question: For each star that does have a planetary system, how
many planets are capable of sustaining life?
Answer: We seem to be getting closer to this one lately. Red
dwarf stars? Who would’ve known?…
57, Comment by Pterocat — 4/26/2007 @ 5:11 pm
RE; Drake equation:
fc is the fraction of fi that communicate
fL is fraction of the planet’s life during which the communicating civilizations live
How long until we destroy the planet? You are correct. Wonder what the actual values of fc and fl are?
Where is Neil deGrasse Tyson when we need him?
http://research.amnh.org/~tyson/
Dang, I hate posting late, no one will ever read this.
How do you slow down a Bussard ramjet on approach to destination?
#34, KarmaBaby, There is a way to compute how much time would pass for the travelers on the ship
Well, since I can’t fish all day, I worked out the relativistic ‘ship time’ accelerating at one G to Gliese 581 — the traveler ages about 9 years.
#59, Timbo, that’s an excellent question, and some have proposed ‘magnetic parachutes’ using the Bussard technology. But the deceleration phase would certainly be longer than the acceleration time.
For robot probes to the nearest stars, deceleration wouldn’t be a problem.