Three superearths 22 light years away

[redpaintednavi]

Three Earth like planets have been found only 22 light years away. Would be nice if they harbored Life.

Super-Earths Could Host Life, Say Scientists

[moonbeam]

That's awesome. Wish I can just fly there.

[Exoblade]

Originally Posted by moonbeam

That's awesome. Wish I can just fly there.

well in galatic scale 22 light years is tiny. However in present pratical scale it is impossible to get to.

[Human No More]

Technically, we could do it, it'd just take several hundred years

[Exoblade]

Originally Posted by Human No More

Technically, we could do it, it'd just take several hundred years

Afraid that the time its going to take to get to stars at present tech (eg ORION drive) though they might actually get warp drive tech working. Assuming it doesn't kill the earth with radiation when they fire it up.

[Clarke]

One possibly danger of the warp drive is that it irradiates the destination.

[Exoblade]

Originally Posted by Clarke

One possibly danger of the warp drive is that it irradiates the destination.

Yes put to test the thing we're going to have to use it in earth orbit. You can't just built the thing and sent it out to another star in the first go.

[auroraglacialis]

As unforseen consequences often go - what are the chances it irradiates the source AND the destination?

... does anyone really make predictions on the effects of a FTL drive that is not even designed in theory yet?

I wonder however how could three planets be within the habitable zone of one star - it is after all rather limited (if you take the definition that excludes Mars- and Venuslike orbits) and planets tend to have a certain distance if they are to be in a stable orbit - if they are too close to each other, they have instable orbits due to the gavitation they have on each other.

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Exoblade

Yes put to test the thing we're going to have to use it in earth orbit. You can't just built the thing and sent it out to another star in the first go.

Launch it at Mars, nobody'll mind.

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

As unforseen consequences often go - what are the chances it irradiates the source AND the destination?

I don't think they're that high, unless forming the warp bubble itself releases radiation.

... does anyone really make predictions on the effects of a FTL drive that is not even designed in theory yet?

The theory is quite well-defined - the ship warps space to such a high degree that the volume of space its in gets dragged forward, motorized walkway-like.

The trick is, of course, engineering a device that can disconnect peices of the universe frome each other.

(Did I mention it works as a time machine? )

[auroraglacialis]

Hey, I know Star Trek
But I was not aware that the theory is so well defined beyond rather speculative hypothesis that such a thing would at all be possible that one could "predict" that the source and/or destination would be irradiated by such a process (one that we dont even know yet and of which we do not know if it is humanly possible at all)

[Clarke]

Someone did the math.

[Human No More]

The main issue with radiation is to the craft itself as radiation gets blueshifted to gamma when it hits it if it is going fast enough.

[Clarke]

I don't think thats a problem with a warp drive, since outside of the front of the bubble is connected to the back of the back of the bubble, rather than the inside of the front of the bubble. (Unless the drive itself produces radiation.)

[redpaintednavi]

New findings suggests that the "super-Earth" GJ 1214 b (Gilese 1214 b) may have a water rich atmosphere.

A Japanese research team of astronomers and planetary scientists has used Subaru Telescope's two optical cameras, Suprime-Cam and the Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS), with a blue transmission filter to observe planetary transits of super-Earth GJ 1214 b (Gilese 1214 b). The team investigated whether this planet has an atmosphere rich in water or hydrogen. The Subaru observations show that the sky of this planet does not show a strong Rayleigh scattering feature, which a cloudless hydrogen-dominated atmosphere would predict. When combined with the findings of previous observations in other colors, this new observational result implies that GJ 1214 b is likely to have a water-rich atmosphere.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0904093259.htm

[iron_jones]

This is all really cool.