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NASA's Kepler telescope discovers first Earth-size planet in 'habitable zone'

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If the telescope is able to get there to take pics why cant the US of A build a larger spacecraft to facilitate the colonization of the planet?
 

Woorloog

Banned
You don't have to travel with lightspeed, 98% would be enough to reach the planet in 100 years.

If the planet is 500 lightyears away, it takes a bit over 500 years at 98% c to get there. Traveling 500ly in 100 years would mean traveling 5 times the speed of light.
EDIT for Earth-observer of course. For someone in the ship... eh, gotta calculate... EDIT ah, apparently it is about 100 years for people onboard.
 

Faith

Member
If the planet is 500 lightyears away, it takes a bit over 500 years at 98% c to get there. Traveling 500ly in 100 years would mean traveling 5 times the speed of light.
No it doesn't, please read up a bit about theory of relativity.

For you on the ship it would be around 100 years, and that's the only thing that matters ;)

Edit: 500 years * (1-(0.98c/c)^2)^1/2 = 99.5 years ^^
 

Woorloog

Banned
No it doesn't, please read up a bit about theory of relativity.

For you on the ship it would be around 100 years, and that's the only thing that matters ;)

Edit: 500 years * (1-(0.98/1)^2)^1/2 = 99.5 years ^^

Earth-observers disagree and say it too 500 years. Which is what matters to them.
 
Will we see real images of the discovered planets in our lifetime or are we stuck with artist renditions for the next hundreds of years?
 

Faith

Member
Earth-observers disagree and say it too 500 years. Which is what matters to them.
The question is: what is the goal? To find aliens? To prove that we are not alone in the universe? I mean Earth would have to wait 1000 years to get a message from the ship team. What if human kind already wiped itself out by then? :p

The only real goal would be to prevent human kind from extinction, if something terrible happened on Earth.
 
No it doesn't, please read up a bit about theory of relativity.

For you on the ship it would be around 100 years, and that's the only thing that matters ;)

Edit: 500 years * (1-(0.98c/c)^2)^1/2 = 99.5 years ^^

Still too far

You would have to either have a ship with artificial gravity or freeze everyone.

Assuming they dont hit anything and start a colony we would have no way to communicate and the delay between attempts at communication would be ridiculous.

Its almost insurmountable.

We need faster that light travel, instant communications (quantum entanglements?) And some way to ensure safety/health during the trip.

Not gonna live to see any of this shit happen. Hell could be hundreds of years away assuming its possible at all.
 

Faith

Member
We are a bacteria on a human skin in New York trying to reach the top of Mount Everest.

It's not impossible, we just have to develop.
 

Woorloog

Banned
The question is: what is the goal? To find aliens? To prove that we are not alone in the universe? I mean Earth would have to wait 1000 years to get a message from the ship team. What if human kind already wiped itself out by then? :p

The only real goal would be to prevent human kind from extinction, if something terrible happened on Earth.

Once a ship is sent sufficiently far away (i figure this limit is at around 50ly), it is practically irrelevant for Earth humans, for it takes so long for the message to come back. Or for the ship. So, yeah, it matters to Earth how long does the trip and return message takes.

I won't bother making predictions about humans further than 250 years away, and even that's very, very difficult. Extinction of H. Sapiens Sapiens 1000 years to future is quite possible, but probably not all human species... I figure it is only a matter of time when there will be a Homo Sapiens Superior or something.
 
We are a bacteria on a human skin in New York trying to reach the top of Mount Everest.

It's not impossible, we just have to develop.

We have to consider that safe faster than light travel could be physically impossible.

Most experts have abandoned time travel already. Talk about squashing dreams.

The 100 uear starship is doable. Its just not going to give us the results we dream about.
 

Chronoja

Member
The question is: what is the goal? To find aliens? To prove that we are not alone in the universe? I mean Earth would have to wait 1000 years to get a message from the ship team. What if human kind already wiped itself out by then? :p

The only real goal would be to prevent human kind from extinction, if something terrible happened on Earth.

Assuming by the time we are able to get a ship of people out to actually visit the planet I'd like to think we'd have nailed quantum entanglement as a means for instantaneous information transfer. Who knows though.
 
Its almost insurmountable.

We need faster that light travel, instant communications (quantum entanglements?) And some way to ensure safety/health during the trip.

Not gonna live to see any of this shit happen. Hell could be hundreds of years away assuming its possible at all.
It will definitely take hundreds of years if we (as a society) wait that long to strive to make it happen.

So based on the way the last 40 years have gone, it might literally never happen.
 
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