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3 earth like planets discovered.
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![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Send message Joined: 20 Jun 99 Posts: 6659 Credit: 121,090,076 RAC: 0 ![]() |
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/18/us/planet-discovery/index.html You won't be swimming on the planets anytime soon, though. The Kepler-62 star is 1,200 light years away; Kepler-69 is 2,700 light years away. A light year, the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one year, is nearly 6 trillion miles. Steve Warning, addicted to SETI crunching! Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group. GPUUG Website |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Send message Joined: 15 May 99 Posts: 3826 Credit: 1,114,826,392 RAC: 3,319 ![]() ![]() |
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![]() ![]() Send message Joined: 9 May 10 Posts: 3387 Credit: 4,182,900 RAC: 10 ![]() |
This is all well and good. I only hope it inspires someone to invent a way around the light speed limit. If that doesn't happen it is all academic except for the possibility of building an Ark ship to keep human life going in the face of an earth destroying event. The problem there being that the humans who arrive at their destination will be totally adapted to living on a ship in space and most likely not bear much in common with their ancestors. Bob DeWoody My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events. |
![]() ![]() Send message Joined: 25 Oct 06 Posts: 3756 Credit: 1,999,735 RAC: 4 ![]() |
I think that we must be careful when the phrase "Earth-like planet" is used. Earth like in what way or ways. i surmise that some 20 or more parameters would have to be in narrow ranges to be considered "Earth-Like". I posit that we will never find another Earth -like planet. They are out there but way too far away. I would like my intuition to be proven wrong. |
Nick ![]() Send message Joined: 11 Oct 11 Posts: 4344 Credit: 3,313,107 RAC: 0 ![]() |
This is all well and good. I only hope it inspires someone to invent a way around the light speed limit. If that doesn't happen it is all academic except for the possibility of building an Ark ship to keep human life going in the face of an earth destroying event. The problem there being that the humans who arrive at their destination will be totally adapted to living on a ship in space and most likely not bear much in common with their ancestors. There must be something yet to be discovered that can defy the speed of light limitations when used to construct a body. A body as such that when travelling can attain virtually any speed it likes. The Kite Fliers -------------------- Kite fliers: An imaginary club of solo members, those who don't yet belong to a formal team so "fly their own kites" - as the saying goes. |
![]() ![]() Send message Joined: 9 May 10 Posts: 3387 Credit: 4,182,900 RAC: 10 ![]() |
This is all well and good. I only hope it inspires someone to invent a way around the light speed limit. If that doesn't happen it is all academic except for the possibility of building an Ark ship to keep human life going in the face of an earth destroying event. The problem there being that the humans who arrive at their destination will be totally adapted to living on a ship in space and most likely not bear much in common with their ancestors. I too hope that there is a way to get around the light speed problem but I don't think such a means is guaranteed to be within our grasp. Bob DeWoody My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events. |
musicplayer Send message Joined: 17 May 10 Posts: 2442 Credit: 926,046 RAC: 0 |
Oh, you say an planet orbiting another solar system is Earth like because it is having liquid water on its surface? We already know about a giant stone planet which is so far away from its mother star that it is readily visible using http://wwww.sky-map.org. And it is not a brown dwarf either, as far as I know it. Still we do not think that such a stone planet is Earth like at all. Why not? Is something more or else missing (like an atmosphere?) |
![]() ![]() Send message Joined: 25 Oct 06 Posts: 3756 Credit: 1,999,735 RAC: 4 ![]() |
We will not travel at any speed approaching or exceeding the speed of light |
![]() ![]() ![]() Send message Joined: 29 Jun 99 Posts: 11444 Credit: 29,581,041 RAC: 66 ![]() ![]() |
That is correct, we will not go that fast. In the future it is unlikely also. |
Nick ![]() Send message Joined: 11 Oct 11 Posts: 4344 Credit: 3,313,107 RAC: 0 ![]() |
Einstein says that at the speed of light mass becomes infinite, and therefore requires an infinite amount of energy to move it. To go faster than light speed we would in theory need negative mass. i.e. a ship built out of tachyons. What's known about anti-matter and it's relationship to the speed of light equation? The Kite Fliers -------------------- Kite fliers: An imaginary club of solo members, those who don't yet belong to a formal team so "fly their own kites" - as the saying goes. |
![]() ![]() Send message Joined: 17 Sep 04 Posts: 8 Credit: 11,760,089 RAC: 0 ![]() |
Antimatter is essentially identical to normal matter (in terms of underlying physics) except that certain properties have the opposite sign. Mass is *not* one of those properties - antiprotons and protons have the same mass, as do electrons and positrons, etc. The sign change may sound like it's really different (and to a certain extent, it is), but we can use the same math analysis to figure out what antiparticles will do. In that regard, the physics isn't different. The idea of negative mass seems unlikely given our current understanding of the relationship between matter and mass (of which the Higgs boson is the latest news). What could be very interesting is figuring out a better relationship between mass and gravity. Currently, the best we have is Einstein's theory of General Relativity, which is a more powerful form of Newton's Universal Gravitation. However, Relativity completely fails to describe gravity at quantum-scales (really, *really* small). The laws of physics must work in any frame of reference. That is one of the tenets of physics. The fact that General Relativity has problems with the really small scale indicates there may be some important stuff there. What we find, though, is anyone's guess. To address your question regarding ...it's relationship to the speed of light equation? the equation a lot of people know and love is: E=m*c2 where E is the total energy, m is the mass of the particle, and c is the speed of light. However, this only describes a particle at rest. The equation for the total energy of a particle moving at speeds getting close to the speed of light is: E=gamma*m*c2 where gamma = 1/( square_root( 1 - v2/c2 ) ). As v increases closer to c, gamma gets bigger and bigger, approaching infinity. Since we can't have infinite energy, we can never make anything with mass travel at the speed of light according to Einstein's theory of Special Relativity. All our observations support Special and General Relativity, so most physicists are pretty confident in saying that it's right, and all physicists will say that it is the best model that we have for gravity. That was a fun tangent. Regarding the original post, I'm really happy to see Kepler performing according to specs and getting due attention. "Future NASA missions are going to focus on more nearby stars that we can look at in much more detail," Barclay said. Yay! It's about time we take a closer look at our own neighborhood. <<Photo: ISS & Shuttle Discovery on STS-116 parting ways>> The SETI@home distributed cluster is listening. |
![]() Send message Joined: 25 Nov 01 Posts: 21533 Credit: 7,508,002 RAC: 20 ![]() ![]() |
I think that we must be careful when the phrase "Earth-like planet" is used. Earth like in what way or ways. i surmise that ... ... there be good material there for some very good Daddio Science ;-) Keep searchin', Martin See new freedom: Mageia Linux Take a look for yourself: Linux Format The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3) |
Darth Beaver ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Send message Joined: 20 Aug 99 Posts: 6728 Credit: 21,443,075 RAC: 3 ![]() |
Voyager will keep going because it got a speed increase from a few of the planets gravity assist it's called. Most comets slow down by the time they are at Jupiter or Saturn so do not have enough speed to go beyond the ord cloud i'm shore others will explain it better ![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Send message Joined: 20 Jun 99 Posts: 6659 Credit: 121,090,076 RAC: 0 ![]() |
never understood why they never sent some new 'Voyagers with todays technologies' towards our neighbors yet. i m pretty sure they would be already further than the old ones. Mostly we are stuck with chemical rockets, and speeds similar to what the Voyagers are doing, and Glenn is somewhat correct. We did use gravity boost, but with specific trajectories to get them heading out of the solar system. Even at extreme energy levels, whether it is the formation or feeding of black holes, or the results of the extreme collisions of particle accelerators, there is no evidence that something could travel faster than light. One of the more promising long term solutions is Ion Drive. Even that has it's limits due to the very low thrust. With such puny thrust, a NEXT-based ion drive would need to run for 10,000 hours — just over a year — to reach a suitable speed for space travel. Dawn, a NASA probe that’s powered by previous-generation NSTAR ion thrusters, accelerated from 0 to 60 mph in four days. As a corollary, ion thrusters only work at all because of the near-vacuum of space; if there was any friction at all, like here on Earth, an ion drive would be useless. The good news, though, is that the (eventual) max speed of a spacecraft propelled by an ion drive is in the region of 200,000 miles per hour (321,000 kph). The efficiency is really much better than chemical rockets, but even at maximum speed, it is not even close to light speed. Steve Warning, addicted to SETI crunching! Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group. GPUUG Website |
bluestar Send message Joined: 5 Sep 12 Posts: 7342 Credit: 2,084,789 RAC: 3 |
Oh, 1/0 = ∞ |
rob smith ![]() ![]() ![]() Send message Joined: 7 Mar 03 Posts: 22652 Credit: 416,307,556 RAC: 380 ![]() ![]() |
Oh, 1/0 = ∞ Well that's true, but what has it to do with the current discussion?? Bob Smith Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society) Somewhere in the (un)known Universe? |
![]() ![]() Send message Joined: 16 Mar 00 Posts: 634 Credit: 7,246,513 RAC: 9 ![]() |
Oh, 1/0 = ∞ Less than the square root of nothing. ![]() |
![]() ![]() Send message Joined: 9 May 10 Posts: 3387 Credit: 4,182,900 RAC: 10 ![]() |
I guess the main point to finding an earth like planet and eventually an alien culture is to establish once and for all that earth is not the only place in the universe with life. Once we get past that bit of culture shock we may just learn to get along better amongst ourselves. But I won't be holding my breath. Bob DeWoody My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events. |
Larry Monske Send message Joined: 17 Sep 05 Posts: 281 Credit: 554,328 RAC: 0 ![]() |
Earth like planets are too small and too far away to study their atmospheres or if they even have one. We predict a planet around another star by studing a minute wobble then its light is correlated to its size and the amount of light blocked by its passage around around its star.They are way too far to considered for some kind of travel to it. For instance The Glise system at 29 lightyears would take you 1,350,000 years one way to get there one way. So all this time and effort to find another earth close enough to travel to is beyond our reach. Distance and time to another world just puts all stars close to us as way too far to consider any travel or studies. |
Larry Monske Send message Joined: 17 Sep 05 Posts: 281 Credit: 554,328 RAC: 0 ![]() |
Voyagers 1&2 are traveling at about 13 miles a second about 60,000 MPH forever. |
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