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

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My mind is read to be expanded by the Cosmos. Don't let me down NASA.

zilxMut.jpg

Neil deGrasse Tyson was on Joe Rogan's podcast earlier today, it was actually a pretty good sit down and talk.
 
What we hope it is: "We found signs of advanced life on another planet"

What it will be: We discovered a way to possibly have a 5% better chance at seeing if a planet has red or brown dirt.
 

E-phonk

Banned
Just a FYI, Belgian national tv (VRT) also talkes about the 7 planets. Article is in dutch:

http://deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws/wetenschap/1.2898281

*Press conference spoilers*


"We found a planet with similar conditions to Earth, which is X light years away. We're going to continue to look at it from this distance with a telescope and hundreds/thousands of years from now we might be able to visit it."
Close enough - it's we found seven.
 
*Press conference spoilers*


"We found a planet with similar conditions to Earth with the potential for life, which is X light years away. We're going to continue to look at it from this distance with a telescope and hundreds/thousands of years from now we might be able to visit it."
 
Well the first exoplanet was discovered only 15 years ago. Lots happening right now it seems. Who knows what we will find in the next 15.

Its the ability to find signs of life in the atmosphere that they think they will soon be able to detect (if there is any) that has me most excited.

Thats like the big event I want to witness in my lifetime.
 

Carn82

Member
https://www.twitter.com/DidierQueloz/status/833976887500234754

https://www.twitter.com/DidierQueloz/status/834027647046918145

Astronomy grapevine says this is news about the TRAPPIST-1 system which has 3 earth/venus sized rocky planets in the habitable zone of its star (a cool red dwarf, so bonus points for the references!)

Probable that they've detected (or even characterised) atmospheres on one/some/all of these planets.


Sounds plausible, since Michael Gillon will be speaking, he manages the TRAPPIST project. Awesome name by the way; can't go wrong with beer.
 

CTLance

Member
Seven planets in the Goldilocks zone? That's nuts!

Imagine if the international space station was actually an interplanetary one! Interplanetary internet!

As always, humanity stays losing. We could have up to six sexy alien neighbourinos, but nooooooooo, we had to settle for this stupid Sol system with nothing but rocks and a star that will eventually roast all of us. Bah. Bah I say.
 
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.
 
is the stream already started? Where are people getting this information from?

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.

Yeah thats why you use light and block out your star in a pattern that could only be interpreted as a signal from a higher intelligence :p
 
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.

You got me excited and then depressed.
 
You got me excited and then depressed.

In truth there are so many factors at stake.

We can't possibly detect the gravitational field on those planets so we don't have any idea about the effects of gravitational time dilation. Time could be passing 20x faster on their planet.

We haven't even taken into account the fact it takes 39 light years for the light of their sun to reach us meaning that we are effectively seeing a long time into the past AKA what those planets were like at the time the light from their sun was radiated out.

That means even if we drastically increase our highest receeding speed - we could arrive to find the situation on those planets vastly different - rendering their discovery even more insignificant at large. Hell - even if we invented cryosleep or FTL travel or whatever - we could arrive to find the star dead and a black hole in it's place.
 

nekkid

It doesn't matter who we are, what matters is our plan.
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.

Fake news. Sad.
 
We haven't even taken into account the fact it takes 39 light years for the light of their sun to reach us meaning that we are effectively seeing a long time into the past AKA what those planets were like at the time the light from their sun was radiated out.

39 years. "light years" is a measure of distance, not time

39 years isn't all that long.

We can accurately predict what will happen to a star in a 39-year period.


we could arrive to find the star dead and a black hole in it's place.

And we could definitely extrapolate whether or not this has any probability of happening given a fairly short time range.
 

Calabi

Member
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.

I heard an estimate it would only take 20 years to reach the nearest star using a Solar Sail method, but the hard part is then slowing down at the other end.
 
So the official story drop in about three hours right?

This new fancy telescope that is going up in late 2018, anyone in the know, what kind if any new information could be discovered then about the planets?

Or is it an completely different set of tools that is used to "see"/detect planets?
 
I mean it's space-time; you can't really separate them.

Of course. I mean, if light entered a black hole and came out of a white hole trillions of miles away, the distance that beam of light would travel in a year would be much further than a beam of light that didn't have such a passage.
And, likewise, an expanding or contracting universe has an impact on this as well.
As does passing near/through gravity wells.

Still, I'm not aware of any SI usage of the term "light year" in which it refers to something other than distance.
 
A Light Year;
A unit of astronomical distance equivalent to the distance that light travels in one year, which is 9.4607 × 1012 km

Therefore it is distance AND speed when used in different contexts.

It's the use of speed over time to equal distance.
 
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