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NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth
- aidos 11y agoLive audio here http://www.nasa.gov/news/media/newsaudio/index.html?2015-07-23 http://www.nasa.gov/news/media/newsaudio/index.html?2015-07-... And slides here (currently on Figure 10) http://www.nasa.gov/keplerbriefing0723 http://www.nasa.gov/keplerbriefing0723 EDIT booooo - audio stream has gone down EDIT yay!
- jfdk 11y agoBack up!
- myth_buster 11y agoThe slides (specially #5/9/11) gives a very good info for people to understand the significance. The size and extent of the habitable zone of Kepler-452 is nearly the same as that of the sun, but is slightly bigger because Kepler-452 is somewhat older, bigger and brighter. The size of the orbit of Kepler-452b is nearly the same as that of the Earth at 1.05 AU. Kepler-452b orbits its star once every 385 days. Close to 300K people tuning in!
- jdavid 11y agoMy viewer says 4.3K
- csense 11y agoThere was an older article in the #1 slot with well over 200 upvotes and a ton of comments, but I don't know what happened to it? Perhaps the mods removed it for some reason?
- mrspeaker 11y agoIt plummeted down off the front page, and is now a bunch of pages deep: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9935198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9935198 I guess it hit some metric in the ranking algo!
- mmastrac 11y agoIt was probably just user-flagged since it was kind of a lightweight submission.
- phantarch 11y agoAt 2 billion years older than Earth, I can't begin to imagine what kinds of things could possibly be living on this planet. Given, of course, that it's got the right ingredients for life to arise. What if it's suffered huge extinctions recently? What if there's a domineering species out to conquer the planet just like humans? What if there's a society there more sophisticated than us? It's a very exciting discovery.
- qrendel 11y agoI propose it's unlikely that any technological civilizations more advanced than our own have existed on this planet in the past few billion years, otherwise some subgroup of their species would likely have seeded the local universe with life (it's only ~1400 lightyears away) and they would be here instead of us. Unless of course the panspermia hypothesis is correct and that is indeed where life on Earth came from.
- ginko 11y agoIt could also be that there was a technologically advanced civilization which destroyed itself.
- ratsimihah 11y agoMaybe we are them. We used to live there, and conditions reached a point when we had to leave, and we came to present Earth. Haha.
- lberger 11y agoGood sci-fi material here.
- logicfiction 11y agoPlausible, but what would be explanations for sending ourselves back to the stone age instead of carry advanced knowledge along?
- FailMore 11y agoWhat's next??? How do we find out if there is life?
- stormcrowsx 11y agoMore money spent on science and technology.
- jaegerpicker 11y agoThis, I think the spending on education, science and technology should be the by far the most spending, like 10x imo.
- parksy 11y agoWhat benefit could that possibly have for humanity? /s
- jessaustin 11y agoWe'll learn how big the invasion force is, and when they're likely to arrive.
- SoftwareMaven 11y agoI wonder how much of the $100M[1] is going to get aimed at this planet. 1. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stephen-hawking-and-yuri-milner-announce-100m-initiative-to-seek-extraterrestrial-intelligence/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stephen-hawking-an...
- svachalek 11y agoI think the basic procedure is to see what chemical signatures can be observed when the planet passes in front of its star (I believe all Kepler-discovered planets do, it's how it finds them) and then try to infer if those could have occurred through purely physical/chemical reactions or if some form of "life" had to be involved. But, consider that there are a few places in our own solar system that "could" support life, probably with more confidence than we have in this planet so far, and yet the question is still wide open. I wouldn't expect a firm answer for many decades to come.
- jpreiland 11y agoTo rephrase another comment in the other submission - how do we know/can we infer so much about a planet so far away when we are just now getting reasonable pictures of Pluto? Looking at the images (aside from the artist interpretation), it looks like they're just guessing based on size and location?
- blueintegral 11y agoI believe they're basing it on size, temperature, and the assumption that the planet is rocky.
- jdavid 11y agoSounds like age, size, density/mass, orbit/location
- toufka 11y agoWe had a good idea of what pluto looked like for decades. But no photo to confirm; the fact it was red, rocky, pocked, etc. We know characteristics about distance, composure, mass, energy, etc. using spectroscopic techniques. Those spectroscopic techniques are applicable to those planets way out there as well.
- peeters 11y agoOne thing to keep in mind is that there is one thing that happens with exoplanets that can never happen with Pluto: the planet can pass between its star and us (i.e. eclipse the star). This gives a lot of information about the planet's composition, because light from the star will scatter/change color according to the planet's composition. See this image: http://seagerexoplanets.mit.edu/images/transitschematic.gif http://seagerexoplanets.mit.edu/images/transitschematic.gif. Now maybe you can do that with Pluto using some far-off star for reference, not sure. Also, I'm not sure if in this specific example the exoplanet made a transit of its star, or if it was detected by other means (usually by measuring its gravitational affect on the star, i.e. its star "wobbles").
- privong 11y ago> Now maybe you can do that with Pluto using some far-off star for reference, not sure. It has been done for Pluto, first in 1988, with an occultation of a background star[0]. [0] http://www.space.com/29885-pluto-atmosphere-to-be-revealed-by-nasa-new-horizons-spacecraft.html http://www.space.com/29885-pluto-atmosphere-to-be-revealed-b...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- lxfontes 11y agoif there is intelligent life there and they point a telescope at us right now, they would be seeing earth ~ 500 years ago. "check out this planet, looks like a promising place once we run out of materials here."
- mbil 11y agoThe planet is 1,400 light-years away. They'd be seeing earth at around 600AD.
- trhway 11y agoby the time our today's signal reaches that planet, we ourselves will already be there to listen to it :)
- nopassrecover 11y agoFTL Travel?
- trhway 11y agoof course. We know that it is possible - the light speed is the limit of speed only in fixed metric space-time, and the Universe itself shows that non-fixed metric space-time(expansion/contraction) can produce FTL speed - just look at all those far galaxies running FTL away from us. It is just a "simple" matter of engineering of local space-time metric geometry changes :)
- sktrdie 11y agoMeh, given the hype for this press-release, I was hoping for something more extraordinary frankly. Not that finding other exoplanets isn't amazing, just that we're all waiting to find out whether we are alone or not in the universe. Finding out that other advanced civilizations exist out there would bring such an amazing new meaning to life. If I could ask for one wish, it would be to find out if we're alone or not. Somehow knowing we're alone would be a large one to swallow, but the universe works in ways that it doesn't care about our feelings.
- uptown 11y agoRead: "Where are all the aliens?" http://qz.com/452452/where-are-all-the-aliens/ http://qz.com/452452/where-are-all-the-aliens/ "We’re rare, we’re first, or we’re fucked."
- camikazeg 11y agoCan't interstellar travel just be impossible?
- Jweb_Guru 11y agoOr at least, highly energy-intensive and fragile (due to problems like cosmic radiation) to the point of impracticality, particularly when it comes to something like panspermia (or, for that matter, sending high-energy signals directly at a planet that doesn't detectably have life from the perspective of the originating species). This possibility is not weighted nearly highly enough in most analyses.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoInterstellar travel is perfectly possible if you're not in a hurry. Assuming there's no way to sidestep GR, the real problem is the human lifespan (and attention span.) If our culture moved at 0.1% of the current rate and we lived a thousand times as long, a 1400 year round trip wouldn't be problematic. It's possible to imagine low-energy lifeforms that move that slowly. But they wouldn't be looking for Earth-like planets to colonise - they'd be looking for much colder and more stable locations. And we wouldn't be looking for the right spectroscopic signals to give them away, because we don't know what they are.
- TTPrograms 11y agoDoes anybody know what the path is to performing some kind of spectroscopy on this planet? Detecting molecules that might indicate life - water, ozone?
- valarauca1 11y agoWhen the planet passes in front of its host star, you can measure the change in the stars spectrum, the new chemicals that aren't normally present in a star are assumed to be the planet's. Telescopes that can do this are still a tiny bit away reality I think.
- goodcanadian 11y agoThis can be done now with bright enough stars. The trouble is that the stars in the Kepler field are typically very far away, and thus not really bright enough to do these sorts of studies. Spectroscopic observations of exoplanets have occurred with nearer and brighter targets.
- niels_olson 11y ago> 1,400 light-years away Very cool that we can find it, but I don't think we'll be visiting this one any time soon...
- mentos 11y agohttp://www.universetoday.com/15403/how-long-would-it-take-to-travel-to-the-nearest-star/ http://www.universetoday.com/15403/how-long-would-it-take-to...
- lucozade 11y agoSo best case about 28,000 years. Which is a bugger as I'm out that week.
- ionwake 11y agoI think there is a theory that we can travel nearly the speed of light , but yeah even then we are a millennia away :(
- danielweber 11y agoIf you could accelerate at 1g, you could reach it in 7 years, in your reference frame.
- ionwake 11y agoWait for the observer... isnt it.... 1800 / 17.... 100 years. So that means, a baby could reach the exoplanet, before it dies of old age, on a spaceship travelling 99% the speed of light, which can theoretically built right now. How did you arrive at your calculation of 7 years? Thanks!
- danielweber 11y agoI eyeballed it from here[1], which I should have just linked with my post. [1] http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/rocket.html http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/rocket.h...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- nirai 11y agofor proportion, studying that planet and its sun is like trying to observe a flea orbiting a ping pong ball floating in space as far away as the moon...
- throwaway_yy2Di 11y agoTo help out anyone trying to search for stuff, * This exoplanet is now "Kepler-452b" (kepler_name), * In the "Kepler Object of Interest" catalog, it's KOI "K07016.01" (kepoi_name), * Its star is both K07016 and Kepler ID 8311864 (kepid), * In the broader 2MASS sky survey, the star has the id "J19440088+4416392" Sources (catalog search engines), http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/TblView/nph-tblView?app=ExoTbls&config=keplernames http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/TblView/nph... https://archive.stsci.edu/kepler/kic10/search.php https://archive.stsci.edu/kepler/kic10/search.php (edit): Here's a mirror of the Kepler catalog entries -- KIC for the star, KOI for the planet: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/deef2bd542224f3a4d9b/raw/69713bafa0c9b1bd454c71ec266946f1ef146a28/gistfile1.txt https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/deef2bd542224f3...
- iso8000 11y agoI really like comments that are made to provide some provenance to a news piece. These facts/references should arguably should have been in the text of the article. Double kudos for providing provenance for your provenance.
- lemue 11y agoThanks, awesome comment!
- mlekhtman 11y agoAwesome comment, saved me a lot of time. Thanks!
- phkahler 11y agoHow big is it? They have 2 numbers: >> Kepler-452b is 60 percent larger in diameter than Earth and is considered a super-Earth-size planet. And then: >> Kepler-452 is 6 billion years old, 1.5 billion years older than our sun, has the same temperature, and is 20 percent brighter and has a diameter 10 percent larger. I noticed the lack of "b" on that second one, but they seem to be talking about a single planet.
- pxndx 11y agoThe second reference talks about the star, which is named Kepler-452.
- stephengillie 11y agoI think "Kepler-452" is the star, and "b" is the 2nd planet in the system. I'm not certain of their naming convention. Edit: Another poster says "b" is the 1st planet found in the system, regardless of position in the system. Earth is 12,742 km in diameter, so "b" must be 20,387 km in diameter. Our Sun is 1,391,684 km in diameter, so Kepler-452 must be 1,530,852 km in diameter. Since the star is 10% larger and 20% brighter, but the same temperature, does that mean it is burning fuel 20% faster, and will enter its later stages earlier?
- coldpie 11y ago>I think "Kepler-452" is the star, and "b" is the 2nd planet in the system. I'm not certain of their naming convention. Yep, you understand it correctly.
- ringshall 11y agoI'm not sure this is correct. According to one source[1], "The name of a newly discovered exoplanet is dependant on the name of the star which it orbits and also if any other exoplanets orbiting the same host star have been discovered. The first exoplanet discovered around a star is given its host star name with ‘b’ appended. The next exoplanet discovered in the same system gets the letter ‘c’ appended and so on. Planets in multiple planet systems are always labelled b, c, d… in the order of discovery." It's not clear to me why they would begin with 'b' instead of 'a', but basing the order of names on the order of discovery makes intuitive sense. The largest planets would presumably be discovered first, even though they may be in the middle zone of their systems (such as in the Solar System). EDIT: Kepler-26[2] is an example of the named order not matching the distance from the star. The planets in that system, in order of distance from their star, are: d, b, c, e [1] https://www.paulanthonywilson.com/blog/how-are-exoplanets-named-the-explanation-behind-the-exoplanet-naming-convention/ https://www.paulanthonywilson.com/blog/how-are-exoplanets-na... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-26 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-26
- king_magic 11y agoSo wouldn't a good next step be to point a bunch of radio telescopes at this system and start listening?
- cbhl 11y agoIIRC, the amount of radio waves leaking from Earth into space has decreased substantially over the last few decades. I wouldn't be surprised if energy efficiency gets to the point where, if a foreign alien civilization notices radio waves from Earth, by the time they transmit a round-trip back at Earth we'll have long since stopped leaking terrestrial radio waves by accident into space.
- dandelany 11y agoTrue, but our radio telescopes have also been improving. The Square Kilometre Array, under construction in Australia, would supposedly be able to detect "an airport radar system on a planet 50 light years away". I suspect that an advanced civilization 500 ly away would still likely leak enough radio for us to detect it with current or near-future technology.
- mcdougle 11y agoUnless their technology developed along a completely different path, and the concept of radio waves is too foreign to them because they use an altogether different method of communication that we can't even begin to imagine.
- cstross 11y agoI want answers to three questions before I get excited: 1. Does it have active plate tectonics? 2. Does it have a working deep carbon cycle? 3. Has its atmosphere hung on to its hydrogen (that is, has it managed not to lose it all to high-altitude UV splitting and solar wind)? If the answer to all three of those is "yes" then this suddenly gets a lot more interesting, whether or not we can see any free oxygen in the atmosphere. And while we won't be able to get answers to them using current technology, next-generation direct-observation planet seeking telescopes might be able to deliver within the 15-30 year time scale (if the astrophysicists I know are correct).
- gregwtmtno 11y agoWe may never know the answers to these questions. Though it is currently possible to say something about the atmospheric composition of some close exoplanets, and that ability will be improved with better telescopes, the planets that Kepler observed during its mission are too far away to learn much about for the foreseeable future.
- ImJasonH 11y agoI'm curious why active plate tectonics makes the planet more interesting. Do those contribute to the "liveability" of a planet in some way?
- cstross 11y agoGoogle on "great oxygen catastrophe" and prepare for an eye-opening experience. (Note that neither Mars nor Venus have active plate tectonics. The surface of Venus melts every couple of hundred million years due to trapped heat, while Mars has no magnetosphere to speak of ...)
- ak217 11y agoYou omit a key point. The oxygen event (initial uplift from near zero at 2.3Ga) is not directly related to plate tectonics. Instead, plate tectonics appears to have helped the oxygen boost at 1Ga: increased volcanic activity released large stores of phosphorus, which is required for photosynthesis, which produces oxygen.
- izend 11y agoDue to the diameter being 60% larger than Earth's diameter, Kepler-452b's ESI score[0] cannot be any higher than 0.85. It might not be the most earth like exo-planet as Kepler-438b[1] has an ESI score of 0.88. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Similarity_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Similarity_Index [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-438b https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-438b
- adamio 11y agoWow, closer than 452b to us and similar size, have we done any focused listening in its direction yet?
- rqebmm 11y agoIn the article they mention that Kepler-438b is likely subject to extreme solar radiation during flares because it's so close to its star. That would make it poor candidate despite scoring high on the ESI scale.
- krschultz 11y agoKepler has to be one of the most interesting NASA missions in the last few decades. We always suspected there were thousands of planets, but knowing it is exciting.
- Gravityloss 11y agoThe significance is this: it's very likely that there are a lot more such planets a lot nearer to us. This is because Kepler can only detect planets which lie in the same plane as earth and the star so the planet occults the star. Assuming random distribution, there's probably thousand fold amount of off plane planets. There are 259 stars within about 30 light years. Communication could be conceivable with such distances... http://joy.chara.gsu.edu/RECONS/TOP100.posted.htm http://joy.chara.gsu.edu/RECONS/TOP100.posted.htm
- jrlocke 11y agoI believe you meant occludes rather than occults
- huehehue 11y agoMost of this discussion is beyond me, so I won't speculate on his intent, but occultation is a real thing too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occultation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occultation
- rfreytag 11y agohttps://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/occult#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/occult#English The verb form is used thus: "The earth occults the moon during a lunar eclipse."
- toomuchtodo 11y ago> This is because Kepler can only detect planets which lie in the same plane as earth and the star so the planet occults the star. What would be necessary for a more comprehensive survey?
- antognini 11y agoIf the planet is not transiting there are two other ways to detect it: radial velocity measurements, and direct imaging. In the radial velocity technique you measure the wobble of the star due to the gravitational pull of the planet. This also requires that the planet be somewhat edge-on, but the requirement isn't nearly as strict as with the transit method. The difficulty is that Earth size planets have very little mass, and so impart a very small wobble to the star, on the order of only ~10 cm / s. In the second method, you just try to block as much light from the star as you can and go look for the reflected light of the planet. This is much, much more difficult and so far has only been done for very large, distant planets.
- stcredzero 11y agoI'm actually more excited about Mars-like terrestrial planets. Mars is large enough to have geologic activity and ores, yet it's small enough to be quite easy to get off of and into orbit.
- rolilink_ 11y agoI think the most important issue is: Are they like us? a civilization that loves going to war and colonize others? that is the most important thing we need to know.
- idlewords 11y agoAre they enough like us be incapable of sustaining a space program?
- ilurk 11y agoIt feels extremely frustrating to know -- not just wonder but to know exactly where -- that there are planets similar to our own, which have a very high probability of harboring life, yet to be condemned to never be able to take a really close look at it. No FTL travel, no working cryonics, no mind-upload tech. Just harsh reality.
- adrianm 11y agoNot having those technologies but being captivated by the possibilities enabled by their existence is essentially what motivates many scientists. Instead of looking at it like a harsh reality, look at it like a grand challenge for yourself to be amongst those who contribute to their development (or provide the building blocks for later generations who do).
- crocal 11y agoFrustrating or motivating? As far as I am concerned, if I live long enough to get even a blurry image of an exoplanet, I will die happy. And the best part: I have a good chance of this happening: http://exep.jpl.nasa.gov/presentations/AIAA_Space_2014Blackwoood%20_%20final.pdf http://exep.jpl.nasa.gov/presentations/AIAA_Space_2014Blackw...
- Mahn 11y agoNot saying that getting an image of an exoplanet at all wouldn't be exciting, but I'd die happier if we could land a rover there.
- elwell 11y agoMaybe the happiness is in the hope. Is there anything you would find there that would actually fulfill you? Maybe it's like when people become rich and they realize that didn't fill them up.
- oberstein 11y agoDonate to the relevant parties. Unless you're already very old or very sick, it's hard to say you're condemned. A lot can happen in the next 40 years.
- scrumper 11y agoI had a bigger, older cousin when I was a kid. He was awesome. He showed me his Playboys and taught me how to shoot. On a serious note, I'm looking forward to the discovery of a smaller cousin. That seems to me to be more promising for life: Stuff in water oceans won't sink as readily, so will be able to absorb more sunlight. Avian species will find life easier going (predicated on a suitably dense atmosphere). Any advanced civilizations will have an easier time getting out of its gravity well, and so on.
- unchocked 11y agoBuoyancy is actually increased under high G, as the recent SpaceX failure illustrated.
- givan 11y agoWhat are the odds that this is just a sunspot?
- cletus 11y agoPersonally I find this discovery rather sobering. It's becoming increasingly clear that solar systems are quite common. As our planet detection abilities increase to smaller and smaller planets I believe we'll find more and more of those too. Some of these (like this one) will be in the habitable zone of a star. Some of those assumedly will develop life. Some of those will develop sentient life. I just picture a timeline like Earth's projected on this planet, which of course has no basis in fact. But imagine a civilization that's had 2 billion years of life longer than ours? That's a really long time obviously. It's hard to imagine that such a civilization couldn't develop automated methods to populate the local space around them. This is one of the counterarguments to life being common in the universe of course. At 1% of the speed of light you could populate the galaxy with autonomous robots in a "mere" 10 million years. So our inability to detect anything like this gives weight to the argument that no such starfaring civilization exists or that they're less than ~10 milllion years old. Was there civilization on this planet and it died out for some reason? We'll probably never know. As these planets mount up (as I believe they will), it'll further strengthen the idea that we're basically doomed (ie the Great Filter) and further suggest we are a mere cosmic blink.
- pi-rat 11y agoNow, if only NASA would announce that Kepler-452b is full of oil, we would have warp engines in under a decade.
- IndianAstronaut 11y agoWhy go that far? Titan, Saturn's moon, is loaded with far more hydrocarbons than are available on Earth.
- pi-rat 11y agoDon't tell that to the politicians! We'll never get to leave the solar-system if they believe they can have all the oil they'll ever need right here in the neighbourhood!
- mcdougle 11y agoThat's probably the next logical step, though, honestly. Not necessarily oil specifically, but resources in general and even colonization of any nearby planets/etc. that will allow it. How did we discover (and begin actually using) the Americas? Christopher Columbus was sent on a trip to retrieve resources from India. It was a financial trip, supposed to enrich the government, not an exploratory one. That's kind of how it's always been. Societies have discovered new people, lands, and resources by accident while trying to expand their empires (generally). Furthermore, as we continue to consume resources and grow our population, we should probably strive to expand our society to other locations before we overconsume and overpopulate to the point that it starts to cause problems.
- Kiter1 11y agoWhat is the statistical probability that a star will have a planetary disk that Kepler can view edge on and has planets that will occult the star?
- jswhitten 11y agoLess than 1%. For every star Kepler has detected a planet around, there's a hundred more stars in its field of view with planets it can't see.
- guiomie 11y ago"385-day orbit" ... Can't wait to have to take into consideration different "year" zone in my code.
- codeshaman 11y ago> Can't wait to have to take into consideration different "year" zone in my code. I guess with Kepler you're safe for the next couple of thousand years, unless we find something much closer. In theory there should be thousands of such planets within 30 light years so who knows, maybe we will have to start thinking about that soon :)
- bpicolo 11y agoseconds since January 1, 1970 on earth is still a valid strategy : )
- InclinedPlane 11y agoAlmost, but not quite. While seconds since Jan 1, 1970 is a perfectly fine system, sadly unixtime has deviated from that simple definition, due to the introduction of leap-seconds.
- jmilloy 11y agoThe 385 day year is mentioned. What about hours in a day? Do we know that?
- unchocked 11y agoWouldn't be able to tell from the data. The yearly cycle produces a partial eclipse of the parent star. A day comes from the planet spinning on its axis and there isn't an actual image of the planet that we could analyse for varying brightness.
- carsongross 11y ago"Where is everybody?" --Enrico Fermi
- humbertomn 11y agoIt IS great news... But it's terrible to see the media here in Brazil going like "We're finally close to discover life in another planet" and things like that... And even worse, people sharing like crazy around the internet, without even reading it or trying to understand what really was discovered. EDIT: typing error
- IndianAstronaut 11y agoLife could mean anything though. It could be bacterial life or advanced life. This discovery doesn't show otherwise, but it does indicate that there are other places which could harbor earth like life.
- baby 11y agoI thought that was why we come on website like HN, to get above the average kind of discussions. I don't think complaining about normal channels of discussion is really relevant.
- aaronbrethorst 11y agoCan anyone show me where Kepler-452b is on a star chart?
- sytelus 11y agoConstellation Lyra Right ascension (α) 18h 46m 35.000s Declination (δ) +41° 57′ 3.93″ Apparent magnitude (mV) 14.467
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- _karthikj 11y agoThings like this boosts my thoughts of life out there living alone, discovering/inventing everything from scratch over and over. While we pride ourselves on passing the knowledge generation by generation to be where we are now, imagine if we could learn/share it beyond our planet, solar system, galaxies.... Long way to go!!
- olq 11y agoI wonder if we'll abide the prime directive when the day comes ;)
- cdz0675 11y agoToday NASA, apparently experiencing hard times with budget [1], announces "let's say" just found exoplanet. With pictures. Awesome high res pictures, reposted by every media in the world, of an object 1400ly away from Earth. Oh, uhm... of an object as it was back in 1875. Photoshop? Sure. For popularization? I wouldn't say. Begging for money? Yeah, more buzz, more money. From whom? 2 days ago Yuri Milner, Russian oligarch and media magnat, announced 100M$ financement of mission to discover new life. Literally 1 person got all this money - Stephen Hawking. Another 100M$, Yura? Davai, at least now you know where to fly! [1]: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/03/05/nasa_budget_2015_more_cuts_more_politics.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/03/05/nasa_bud...
- jajaBinks 11y agoOnly news such as this has the potential to unite humankind.
- yadakhov 11y agoM class planets.
- frade33 11y agois there one of me?