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Originally posted by Bobolink:
And in stellar distance, it's practically our next door neighbour.

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They said that it orbits one of the 100 closest stars to our solar system (out of billions and billions of stars in the universe). So, yeah, it's really one of the very closest things to us. Yet, if we could jump in one of our modern space rockets (and travel at 35,000 miles per hour), it would nearly 400,000 years to get there!!

[ 24 April 2007: Message edited by: Sven ]

the closer the orbit, the easier it is to find the planet. Because when the orbit is smaller the planet has a biugger gravitational impact on the star, and so the wobble is bigger. And as such, we're not finding so many planets like this because they're more common, but because however common they may they're much easier to find. We won't have the technology to find Earth like planets around sun like stars for around another decade. Anyhow, it's not that particularly a close orbit here as it's a red dwarf. It's the temperature equivalent of our orbit.

[ 25 April 2007: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:
the closer the orbit, the easier it is to find the planet. Because when the orbit is smaller the planet has a biugger gravitational impact on the star, and so the wobble is bigger.

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[Edit to add:] Er, quelar, did you take a wrong turn on the way to this planet?

[ 25 April 2007: Message edited by: Albireo ]

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To use a Star Trek reference, it could be our figurative Alpha Centauri -- the first port of call in space travel or even a new home should the Earth become uninhabitable.

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But the problem is there already is an actual Alpha Centauri; about four light years (40 trillion K) from here and is a binary star system likely with no planets.

But maybe we have accidentally discovered Kronos, the home world of the Klingons! Prepare for attack! Or Vulcan! Prepare to be lectured!

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Ah! But that's with conventional liquid fuel rocket technohow. With thermonuclear propulsion, the distance could be traversed in half to perhaps a third the time!

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Fidel, Fidel. From insisting on seeing socialism where there is none, now to this. What am I gonna do with you?! I think you know as well as anyone that thermonuclear propulsion is now little more than a theory with no practical method of application. Maybe at some point in the future, it will have; but from what I can tell no one is even close to anything like that.

Ironically, the first nuclear power space engine was proposed in 1958, called Project Orion, which claimed it was possible to power a craft by exploding atomic bombs in space against some sort of re-enforced inertial plate or pad. The theory was that this would allow space craft to travel at, or close to, light speed, making many solar systems in our end of the galaxy fairly accessible.

The project was scrapped, partly due to the 1963 ban on space-based nuclear weapons, but mainly due to the fact there was no technology capable of doing this at all, and there was no way that the US-based NASA was going to spend the estimated tens of billions of dollars in the feint hope of doing it—at least not while more practical efforts, like the moon landing and deep space probing were more do-able.

Some people out there recently have been calling for the project to be started up again, given that better technology and understanding is out there that could likely improve the chances of success.

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Let's hope that there is intelligent life somewhere out in space...because there is bugger all down here on Earth.

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Agreed. But then again, what's the point of even hoping if it's likely that intelligent life would want sweet f*&k all to do with us anyway?

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Gravity is 1.6 times as strong as Earth's so a 150-pound person would feel like 240 pounds.

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Heh. Welcome to my world you skinny assed freaks.

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The planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile, which has a special instrument that splits light to find wobbles in different wave lengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds.

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I don't understand how they can estimate temperatures of a planet they discovered through inference of wobbles from the light of the star.

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I don't understand how they can estimate temperatures of a planet they discovered through inference of wobbles from the light of the star.

Can anyone shed some light on this for me?

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Apparently, this can be done by measuring the light intensity of the star, via a light meter, the distance between the star and the planet, and the intensity of the reflection off the planet (it's also how they determine the mass). from then they can calculate an overall average temperature.

Rough idea: I assume that they estimated the temperature based on the luminosity of the star (how much energy it emits) and the distance of the planet from the star.

They can figure out the luminosity of the star by a spectral analysis of its light, together with a knowledge of how far the star is from us. They can figure out the distance of the planet from the star by knowing its mass and orbital period -- which in turn they can figure out from how it affects the star (how much "wobble" does it cause, and at what rate). The math on some of this stuff can get complicated when there are multiple planets around the same star, each of which affects how the star "wobbles".

Added note regarding this from two posts ago: "the intensity of the reflection off the planet...".

I don't think that they can actually detect light reflected off the planet; otherwise they would be observing the planet visually, which I don't think has been done.

In cases of transits (a planet passing in front of the star), there have been cases where they have reached conclusions about a planet's atmosphere (that it does have one, and what is likely in it) by analyzing the effect on the light passing through the planet's atmosphere. Examples:

http://unisci.com/stories/20014/1128011.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070410174108.htm

[ 25 April 2007: Message edited by: Albireo ]

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
The project was scrapped, partly due to the 1963 ban on space-based nuclear weapons, but mainly due to the fact there was no technology capable of doing this at all

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If we eventually set up a base on the Moon, the safety concerns for the Earth would vanish, and Orion would become feasible- although that might take several decades. But, how feasible would it be for interstellar travel? The Wikipedia article on Project Orion states that the maximum speed of a thermonuclear (as opposed to fission) Orion-type ship would be around 0.1 c, not fast enough to produce any significant time dilation, so it would take around 200 years to get to this planet. It would, however, be good for interplanetary travel, robotic interstellar travel, and maybe for generation starships if you could find people willing to crew them.

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
But the problem is there already is an actual Alpha Centauri; about four light years (40 trillion K) from here and is a binary star system likely with no planets.

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Yeah, in non-science-fiction life, Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to Earth, composed of three stars and no planets; its proximity has been the creative spur for all kinds of fictitious accounts, from Star Trek to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. All it's missing is a planet!

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With the next generation of telescopes to go up during the next decade, we'll be able to find hundreds of these. And Canadian astronomers will play an integral part.

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It looks like a Canadian telescope played a part in this discovery. From the NY Times:

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Dr. Udry said he and Dr. Sasselov would be observing the Gliese system with a Canadian space telescope named MOST to see if there are any dips in starlight caused by the new planet. Failing that, they said, the best chance for more information about the system lies with the Terrestrial Planet Finder, a NASA mission, and the Darwin missions of the European Space Agency

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If we could travel a million miles per hour, it would take a single space ship over 300,000 years to just to reach that planet.

The probability of intelligent life in the universe other than on Earth is extremely high (probably very close to 1). But, the probability of Earthlings ever seeing it is extremely low (probably very close to zero).

ETA: Out of the billions of galaxies in the universe, the time it would take a traveler to move across the distance of our single, lone galaxy at 1 million miles per hour? Over 66 million years.

Earth is realy less than a speck of nothing in the universe, no?

[ 25 April 2007: Message edited by: Sven ]

[ 05 May 2007: Message edited by: Agent 204 ]

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:
Strange all you people believe that special relativity is the final word on physics.

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The quantum field theory came directly from his general relativity and he found it distasteful. Hense his famous quip about God, dice and the universe. (Notably Bohr responded by instructing Albert to stop telling God what to do!)

The whole Standard Model that governs particle physics now is just that - a model. The Large Hadron Collider, now coming on line is intended to investigate the predicted Higgs boson, called the God particle - is quite prepared to live with a complete revision of the Bohr/Heisenberg pattern.

The glory of a model is that is provides a path for studies - if the model is off, they change the model, reality cannot be altered.

http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/13/5/9

[ 05 May 2007: Message edited by: Croghan27 ]