7 ms·
This is an amazing discovery! The star is only 22 lightyears away, and it's got three potentially habitable planets. That's astounding. This is probably going t
by cryptoz 13y ago
This is an amazing discovery! The star is only 22 lightyears away, and it's got three potentially habitable planets. That's astounding. This is probably going to be one of our first destinations, when humanity starts building interstellar craft. Of course, the discoveries are still very early right now and we'll probably find all sorts of Earth-like planets quite close. But three Super Earths in the habitable zone of a close-by star? That's almost as good as it gets.
Edit: And surely this will be a focus of searching for life as well. A high concentration of life-capable planets in the same radio direction? Yes please. Also, I've often wondered if having a high density of habitable planets in the same system as your species would increase the chances and speed to becoming a spacefaring species. If you have a lot of places to go that are quite inviting and not that difficult to get to, you'll probably go.
- exratione 13y agoSeems unlikely to be the first choice of destination on that basis. By the time the technology exists to reliably transport people (or equivalent amounts of mass) to other planetary systems in a usefully short amount of time, then the technology will also exist to cost-effectively (a) make everything habitable for baseline humans via habitats and other forms of engineering, and (b) engineer sentient entities that can live comfortably in native conditions near anywhere in a star system. So whether or not the system has habitable zone planets will be irrelevant. Our descendants will go to the closest one first.
- GotAnyMegadeth 13y agoBut it depends what is cheaper...
- prawks 13y agoI think you're underestimating the importance of not living in bubbles for a) and opening a can of worms by assuming b).
- nnq 13y agoand what would that can of worms be? :) ...really, if there is a "can of worms" to open here, we'll open it quite soon, well before any such voyage, by starting to do cosmetic-human-genetic-engineering, economic-oriented-human-genetic-engineering and warfare-oriented-human-genetic-engineering, and I'm pessimistic enough to bet on the third one as the first to crop up (nothing better than: "supper smart military engineers", "super smart, fit, sociopathic and fanatic - ie. unbreakable - spies" or any other such combos that I'm sure make up some twisted folks' wet dreams...).
- mtgx 13y agoCould still be useful in case anything ever happens to our solar system. But 22 lightyears means it's still going to be one-way trip, even with matter/anti-matter engines. Unless we develop immortality by then of course...
- Aardwolf 13y agoOr procreating on the space ship.
- Fargren 13y agoHow is that not a one way trip?
- cryptoz 13y agoStaying on Earth is also a one way trip then.
- chucknelson 13y agoI think the point was more about a one-way trip for a single person. I'd agree that it's not a one-way trip for humanity, though. Once some of us get there (e.g., progeny of the original crew), eventually some of us could get back to Earth too (at some later date). Assuming Earth isn't destroyed by that point...
- hnriot 13y agoProbably by the time the progeny get back to Earth the current species will have self-annihilated and the earth would have returned to a more peaceful place, the atmosphere recovered, the vegetation replacing the asphalt and the oceans clean and pure. A few thousands years peace is exactly what the Earth needs.
- obviouslygreen 13y agoWithout the "trip" part.
- kijin 13y agoHabitable zone planets are interesting primarily because there might be alien life on them, and only secondarily because we might want to colonize them. Our descendants will probably not allocate billions of dollars on a mission to a ball of dry rock when the alternative is a planet with a potential for life.
- VladRussian2 13y ago>Our descendants will probably not allocate billions of dollars on a mission to a ball of dry rock if our descendants will still be thinking in billions of dollars ...
- leishulang 13y agoSame goes why goto the moon when we are not colonizing the sea. We will go there simply to proof our technology advancement.
- a3n 13y ago22 lightyears is close enough for a conversation, although it would be quite the remote working challenge.
- philbarr 13y agoProbably more effective than the remote working conversations I'm having these days.
- robbiep 13y agoalthough it doesnt state their mass, as super earths it isnt likely to be much fun living there - higher gravity means people born in lower gravity systems would initially be oppressively heavy, and then just really really uncomfortable should they stay long enough to adapt; whilst the gravity well means getting off again is going to require much larger rockets (assuming similar atmospheric density). Although if we can solve getting there we can probably solve constructing a space elevator to get on and off relatively fuel-free
- russell 13y agoAs I have aged I have evolved a fairly effective simulation of a higher gravity environment. Running and falling down arent so much fun, but you can cope fairly well.
- xradionut 13y ago"That's astounding. This is probably going to be one of our first destinations, when humanity starts building interstellar craft." Not going to happen for practical physical and economic reasons. I'd sooner bet on a mass extinction event or singularity than a bunch of greedy superstitious primates actually develop interstellar travel.
- chucknelson 13y agoOK, you need to watch some more Star Trek and get some optimism going ;)
- lysol 13y agoI watched the last two ST movies and it just makes me want to see shit explode.
- cpeterso 13y agoEveryone knows Star Trek films are terrible. :)
- xradionut 13y agoAfter 4 decades of reading/watching sci-fi, I've evolved to reality based entertainment. :p Actually if you read John Barne's article on world-building,"How to Build a Future," where he talks about building the universe for the "Thousand Cultures" series, he discusses in detail the issues with local interstellar travel. (Since he has to plot around them.) Also Star Trek is space opera, you probably should be reading hard sci-fi.
- omegant 13y agoHard scify is limited because is based on current knowledge. In 200 years thinks may have evolved quite a bit though. Maybe not to startrek standars, but something completely different that we can not imagine now(or that we can imagine but not give a theorem about).
- 13y ago
- vbtemp 13y agoJust remember being in a "habitable zone" is but one, small necessary (and by itself absolutely insufficient) condition for actually being "habitable" or sustaining life. Recall that the earth is gifted with an active planetary core inducing a strong magnetic shield around the planet, has a single moon of sufficient mass and distance to throttle earth's rotation back to just the right speed to have a stable atmosphere, as well as the proper chemical composition...
- 3825 13y agoThat's what I was thinking. Isn't Mars in a habitable zone as well?
- Zardoz84 13y agoIt's in the border. In theory can be terraformed.
- arethuza 13y agoLooks like it depends how you define "habitable zone" - it seems that if you are conservative about it (i.e. Earth sized planets remaining habitable) then Mars is actually outside of that zone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstellar_habitable_zone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstellar_habitable_zone
- chc 13y agoI see don't see where that article suggests that Mars is outside the habitable zone by any reasonable estimate. The only part I see questioning Mars's position suggests that Mars might actually not be as close to the edge as we think. Mars's lack of habitability is partly because of its position, but also partly due to other factors like its lack of a magnetic field and atmosphere. If you somehow "poofed" a copy of Earth into Mars's place, I think it would be considered habitable (but still not really for humans), though I'm not really qualified to say that with any certainty.
- 13y ago
- loudmax 13y agoI think mineral-rich asteroids would be a likelier first destination for interstellar colonists than an Earth-like planet. The Earth's gravity well is an enormous impediment to space travel. And in micro gravity, we can fly! A large enough asteroid with a hollowed out core with a stable star nearby to provide energy would be the kind of place I'd expect to see colonized first. Planetary scale terraforming can come later. Having said that, this is an exciting discovery. Kudos to the team that discovered these planets.
- roc 13y ago> "And in micro gravity, we can fly" And our bodies rapidly fail... Any colony for contemporary humans will need earth-like gravity, artificial or otherwise.
- leishulang 13y agoWell, contemporary humans are transforming into cyborgs.
- roc 13y agoIn which case: who needs micro-gravity to fly?
- ChuckMcM 13y agoOne wonders about the ramifications of this. Imagine how our history would be different if we had evolved on a planet with two other planets that could reasonably be expected to support people living on them. Or our experience as we visited those neighboring planets and interacted with stuff that possibly evolved there in ways that are different to the way we evolved. And with the possibility that we were the species that hadn't evolved quite as quickly such that one of the neighboring planets colonized us before we reached their level of technology. Now imagine we notice that a star "near" us has similar conditions to those on the three planets in our system on which we have established our civilization. Do we explore them or do they explore us? :-)
- kirubakaran 13y agoI've always thought that we are lucky to have the moon. A nice little stepping stone.