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NASA exoplanet discovery conference (7 Earth-sized planets, 3 in habitable zone)

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D

Disagree Guy

Member
NH Apache said:
Well, it's more like it is short hand for a distance.

Light travels at 10^12 km/year.

When you take Light years, the units are (year)*(10^12 km/year) and so you are left with distance, in this case km.
Click to expand...

You can deduce distance, speed and time from a 'light year'.

Distance - the distance light travels in one year
Speed - the speed light has to travel to reach the distance covered in a year
Time - The time it takes a thing to reach the same distance light does in that same amount of time.
 
U

ultratruman

Banned
Disagree Guy said:
7 potentially habitable planets.

39 light years away.

That's only 370,500,000,000,000 km away

That's only travelling 299,792 kilometers per second for 39.29 years

The fastest receeding spacecraft at the moment is Voyager 1, which is exiting the solar system at 62,000kmh which would take nearly 700,000 years to reach that far.
Click to expand...

In addition, the fastest spacecraft ever built was Helios 2, which reached an estimated 356,040km/h relative to the Earth in 1989, or almost 100km/s. Using this velocity, it would only take a brief 120,000 years to reach the exoplanet's solar system.
 
D

Disagree Guy

Member
ultratruman said:
In addition, the fastest spacecraft ever built was Helios 2, which reached an estimated 356,040km/h relative to the Earth in 1989, or almost 100km/s. Using this velocity, it would only take a brief 120,000 years to reach the exoplanet's solar system.
Click to expand...

If you look at the evolution of technology from 1800-1900 - it was huge. If you look at the evolution of technology from 1900-2000 it was astronomical. If you look at the potential evolution of technology from 2000-2100 then it isn't out of the realms of possibility for humanity to create a device or at least a means, by which to travel that distance within a humans life time.

BELIEVE!

In 1901 the first radio was invented... Soon after was the first recorded flight.....
By 1969 humans were watching other humans walking on the moon on television
By 1989 Internet was invented.....

It's astonishing.
 
Z

zeshakag

Member
-Plasma Reus- said:
They should stop these conferences. I mean, who is it even for? Youre making the regular folk less and less excited about space every time you do one of these things.

Imagine if they had only held these kinda of conferences for major things. It would be all over the news for days.
Click to expand...

They're for astronomers and other scientists. NASA is one of the last bastions of hard adherence to the scientific method in the the US public sector. We as laymen shouldn't erode the importance of it by asking them to stop conferences because they aren't E3 level announcements.
 
L

liquidtmd

Banned
zeshakag said:
They're for astronomers and other scientists. NASA is one of the last bastions of hard adherence to the scientific method in the the US public sector. We as laymen shouldn't erode the importance of it by asking them to stop conferences because they aren't E3 level announcements.
Click to expand...

"We've found alien life, we will get there in a couple of thousand years please be excited!"

Textbook Square-Enix
 
N

NH Apache

Banned
Disagree Guy said:
You can deduce distance, speed and time from a 'light year'.

Distance - the distance light travels in one year
Speed - the speed light has to travel to reach the distance covered in a year
Time - The time it takes a thing to reach the same distance light does in that same amount of time.
Click to expand...

Your user name is fitting. I disagree and there are various sources which define it as a unit of distance, including NASA:

https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/question19.html
https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/light-year.htm
And it is officially defined by the IAU as distance as well.

I can understand the misconception due to the usage of rate, but with the unit math above and the community consensus, it is most definitely a measurement of distance.

The good news is that the planets are only 11.963 parsecs away. Also a unit of distance.
 
D

Disagree Guy

Member
NH Apache said:
Your user name is fitting. I disagree and there are various sources which define it as a unit of distance, including NASA:

https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/question19.html
https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/light-year.htm
And it is officially defined by the IAU as distance as well.

I can understand the misconception due to the usage of rate, but with the unit math above and the community consensus, it is most definitely a measurement of distance
Click to expand...

I understand that - it is a unit of distance - but you can easily use it to extrapolate speed and time as well....

I'm not sure if I'm just wording it like a plank but you can deduce speed, time and distance from a light year.

NH Apache said:
The good news is that the planets are only 11.963 parsecs away. Also a unit of distance.
Click to expand...

That's only the Kessel run away!
 
H

Huw_Dawson

Member
I love how NASA have to constantly make spoiler alerts about these announcements not being aliens.

I hope it's a rocky Earth-sized planet in the Goldilocks Zone. I think the science is not there yet to determine the chemical compisition of an exoplanet's atmosphere, right?
 
-Plasma Reus-

-Plasma Reus-

Service guarantees member status
One of them they say has water on it?!? nice.

They are also saying the planets are so close, you can see the others like you can see our moon from the surface of one of these.
 
B

brau

Member
Probably its own thread worthy.

NeUaobX.png
Click to expand...
 
A

AlexBasch

Member
Trump is signing an executive order as we speak to claim ownership over the new found planets and name them Trump Planet (TM).

Seriously though, that tidal locked thing means they don't move? Didn't know planets could do that.
 
S

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
fanboi said:
I guess that it would be hard supporting life? Since they are tidal locked?
Click to expand...

You can have worlds that are arctic on the dark side and habitable on the fringes and sun side
That could even be more stable for the formation of life and organic chemistry.
 
A

Alexlf

Member
Gat damn, they might already have some sort of space federation between all their planets. This is pretty awesome.
 
Mohonky

Mohonky

Member
Just think, you could be finding aliens out there, instead Trump is gonna spend 25 billion to keep them in Mexico
 
L

liquidtmd

Banned
Thanks mod for the title update

Well this is actually more interesting than I originally thought.

Bring on the James Webb shenanigans on them
 
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