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Webb confirms its first exoplanet
- heisenzombie 4y agoIt's so cool how far we've come with exoplanet discovery in such a short time! The first one was only in 1992 and it's so neat seeing us go from only picking up giants to being able to detect smaller and smaller planets. Now to get chemistry from a rocky planet?! Awesome.
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y agoI remember when I talked to my parents and others telling them it's obvious exoplanets exist - since our Sun is a star and there are many stars, it seemed logical that at least some of them do have their planets. They would laugh and say, "Yes, it's not impossible, but for now it's just science-fiction." Again, since life developed on our planet, it seems logical that it also exists at some of the exoplanets. We are just lacking an efficient method of communicating with them.
- rnk 4y agoYes, of course. It must be life is present in other places because of the vast number of suns with planets. We are starting to see that planets are forming around stars in some ways similar to us, other ways different (it's hard to see earth like planets bc of limits of our technology). We already know rocks can get ejected from one planet in our own solar system, and thus have certainly the possibility to spread small bits of dna from earth to mars (and it could go the other way). We have seen the 4 dna bases (plus the one that is different is rna) in space. We have the extremely suggestive but not certain possibility that methane detected on mars is coming from biological processes. There is certainty on life in the universe elsewhere - at least microbial but I think it's certain that higher level life forms are there. We don't know nearly as much about advanced life, like say animals, plants over bacteria, much less intelligent life. But the universe is so huge, I think it's likely there are other places with intelligent life.
- chrsw 4y agoBoth things can be true: the universe can be incomprehensibly vast and life can be incalculably rare.
- throwaway4aday 4y agoI still trust in the Copernican principal until proven otherwise.
- chrsw 4y agoMaybe. Or maybe we're not special only in the sense that every place is special. Is any one particlar day special? No. Has any day ever been duplicated? Never.
- throwaway4aday 4y agor/Showerthoughts is that way -->
- _ph_ 4y agoThe default assumption should be that the solar system is typical and that would lead to numerous earth-like planets in the galaxy and that would give hope to a lot of (intelligent) life. But untiol a few years ago, this was just a very plausible explanation. Since then we have confirmed thousands of planets. So while there are still a lot of unknowns for a good prediction, the planet count is at least consistant with the assumption, that solar-like systems are not an exception.
- Beltalowda 4y agoIf you accept the possibility of the multiverse as a "solution" to why the laws of the universe allow for life to develop in the first place (in quotes as it's not really a solution as it can never be proven), then it seems to me there is no reason to think that intelligent life can't be so rare that only in 1% of all universes that can support intelligent life, intelligent life actually develops.
- throwaway4aday 4y agoI believe this is the definition of multiplying entities unnecessarily.
- Beltalowda 4y agoThat's just a heuristic.
- throwaway4aday 4y agoA very good reason to use it!
- est31 4y ago1992 was 30 years ago. You should probably add for a project with limited military potential. The time between Sputnik's launch and the first manned Moon landings was only 12 years, but there you had the military component. Of course it's still amazing progress and there is a lot of engineering involved in it. I'm definitely a fan.
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoThis. 1902 vs 1932. 1932 vs 1962. 1962 vs 1992. It's like they're different worlds. Ever since humanity broke out of the "just being a subsistence farmer or serf like my parents" loop a hell of a lot happens in 30yr.
- mikeInAlaska 4y agoInteresting choice for the first Webb exoplanet at 41 light years distance. There are 11 stars within 10 light years of us. Does their choice mean that none of the closer stars have systems that are edge-on to us?
- stronglikedan 4y agoPerhaps the closer stars are too bright to analyze what's near them?
- Rebelgecko 4y agoDo the sun/earth also limit where the Webb can point? It might have to wait until the earth goes around the sun more to look some directions
- kibwen 4y agohttps://webb.nasa.gov/content/forScientists/faqSolarsystem.html#whatlookat https://webb.nasa.gov/content/forScientists/faqSolarsystem.h... "What can Webb look at?" "Anything more than 85° from the Sun as viewed from L2, which includes Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, their satellites, the asteroid belt, and all outer Solar System objects. JWST also can't look farther from the Sun than 135° (i.e. within 45° of the anti-sun position) but outer solar system objects will all be observable some of the time. The field of regard limitations are a fundamental consequence of the observatory thermal design and the sunshield design that keeps the telescope and instruments cold. This means that the Sun, Earth, Moon, Mercury, and Venus, and of course sun-grazing comets and many known NEOs cannot be observed."
- twawaaay 4y agoYou not only need a system that has exoplanet transiting its star, you also need to have it happen at right time (it happens at most once per exopelanet's orbit) and also at right time for Webb to look at (remember, it is severely restricted in where it can point).
- 4y ago
- kokanee 4y agoTheoretical question: if spectrography advanced to the point that we could see individual organisms and their behavior from lightyears away, and then we placed a very large mirror very far away from our planet, could we aim a telescope at that mirror and watch ourselves going about our lives in the past? Could we use this technology to solve crimes, answer historical questions, see dinosaurs, etc?
- pixl97 4y agoI don't think it's possible. R squared pretty much means that no light from an individual organism will ever reach you. The number of photons reflected from a planet is a staggeringly large number, but the distances involved mean that the faction that actually hit your spectrograph are so incredibly tiny that its impossible to tell what they are from. Now, that's just in one way travel. In two way reflected travel it gets even worse. Only some tiny fraction of our light will hit the mirror due to R2. There is no such thing as a perfect mirror so only a tiny percent of the tiny percent will be reflected back. Distances in space are stupid. Our minds cannot comprehend them.
- sockaddr 4y ago> see dinosaurs Only if you had the ability to outrun a photon that has been traveling for 65,000,000 years, park, set up camp, and build a mirror. But then, if you can do that why are you building a mirror?
- scrumper 4y agoWhat if you could avoid the travel? Perhaps some chance alignment of distant black holes creating something like a gravitational mirror? Bend the light, bend it some more, bend it so it reaches earth today. A 65 million light year round trip.
- pyuser583 4y agoIs it in the habitable zone? My daughter wants to know.
- scotty79 4y agoNot really? From what I read temperature there is few hundred degrees higher than here. Unless it's tidally locked "eyeball world" then probably not too livable.
- jacquesm 4y agoNot livable for Earth life. But it isn't Earth.
- steve_adams_86 4y agoGiven how much energy can be present inside planets and how water can persist underground so long as there is a stable water cycle in the atmosphere and planetary surface, I have a feeling that (similar to earth) tons of life would be possible in the dark, feeding off of geological outputs. This kind of scenario seems like a potential hotspot for sources of life. Maybe not intelligent, but I’d be elated if we found it. Water is just an example here — who knows what’s possible.