NASA Announces a Single Star Is Home to At Least 7 Earthlike Planets

[Deleted]

It is, but pointless given how long it would take.

We can't really though.
We could send probes or something, but as we know, the time to get there is (technical terms...) "A bloody long time".
To even try & send something large enough with enough people on there & food/water etc & births required for people to be alive when getting there.... Even assuming that someone doesn't go loco & just open a door en route

I still hope that it'll happen at some point, but I don't imagine it ever will

[Mad_Murdock]

The most important part of this announcement, is that no one was wearing an offensive shirt. Another win for SWJs!

[Docturphil]

How many light years away and how long would it take for us to get there using current tech?

If it's 39 light years away... Well let's do the math...

Let's say the fastest spaceship can currently go about 36,000 MPH. That should at least be in the ballpark.

The speed of light in a vacuum is about 186,000 miles per second. Or 669,600,000 MPH.

39 light years means it would take light 39 years to reach that point.

669,600,000 / 36,000 = 18,600

18,600 * 39 = 725,400 years.

It would take 725,400 years to reach that star system. So it's impossible to ever get there with current technology.

The only way mankind could get there in 725,400 years would be to create a spaceship which could sustain 725,400 years of human generations. And that we also do not have the technology for. The spaceship would have to be massive because you would need enough people to have a large enough gene pool to avoid issues which could arise from inbreeding. You would also have to overcome the issue of having a sustainable food source that could last for 725,400 years. Not to mention the possibility of some sort of plague wiping out all human life on the ship or the humans on the ship killing each other because they lost their sanity. There are still about a bazillion other things which could go wrong in that 725,400 year period. The chances would still be outrageously high that the ship would never make it to its destination.

And besides all that, if you can create a spaceship capable of sustaining human life for that long, what's the fucking point of travelling to this star system in the first place? Why not just create a bunch of these spaceships?

That said, man it would be really fucking cool if we actually did it. But then there would even be a very high chance that the star system would have no planets which could sustain human life. So it would actually be pretty terrible if people made it there only to find that it was for nothing.

[Deleted]

However, if someone is living there, maybe they could reach us with their technology

[Astalnar]

They need to work on their naming conventions. I'm sure you run out of deities at one point, but we're hitting a rock-bottom when we're naming stars after cheese.

[Tradewind]

They need to work on their naming conventions. I'm sure you run out of deities at one point, but we're hitting a rock-bottom when we're naming stars after cheese.

Should just refer to it as 2MASS J23062928-0502285 it just rolls off the tongue.

It's also named from after the Belgian telescope that first catalogued it Named after the "samely" named Belgian monks

[Activi-T]

However, if someone is living there, maybe they could reach us with their technology

It's already been listened to by S.E.T.I and they didn't detect anything. That isn't to say nothing is there, just nothing with similar technology that we know how to pick up on.

[Harakka]

The fastest spacecraft ever built, the New Horizons probe to Pluto and beyond, is creeping along at about 36,000 mph (59,000 k/h). And the speed of light, which is nearly 671 million miles per hour (1.1 billion k/h). With a little math you can calculate how long it will take us to travel 39 light years 671M / 36k=18638.8 years. This is how long it will take us to travel 1 light year at 36,000mph which is the current highest travel speed according to NASA.

18638.8*39 = 726916.6 Years

[Docturphil]

It says 39 in the article.

Two years ago, I would have said it may as well be in another galaxy. But if there is any truth to the hype on the new NASA engine...well....who knows now?

I believe you're referring to EmDrive. Even if EmDrive is proven to be real, AFAIK they're only capable of accelerating particles beyond the speed of light. Accelerating objects which, relative to what they're measuring, are absolutely massive would be a whole other story. Even if EmDrive is what they hope it is, it will still probably take decades before they develop anything practical.

[Tijuana]

I believe you're referring to EmDrive. Even if EmDrive is proven to be real, AFAIK they're only capable of accelerating particles beyond the speed of light. Accelerating objects which, relative to what they're measuring, are absolutely massive would be a whole other story. Even if EmDrive is what they hope it is, it will still probably take decades before they develop anything practical.

Of course. And, we aren't even sure wtf is going on with it yet. However, without this engine, any talk of going 39 light years away isn't science, it's science fiction.

[Harakka]

If it's 39 light years away... Well let's do the math...

Let's say the fastest spaceship can currently go about 36,000 MPH. That should at least be in the ballpark.

The speed of light in a vacuum is about 186,000 miles per second. Or 669,600,000 MPH.

39 light years means it would take light 39 years to reach that point.

669,600,000 / 36,000 = 18,600

18,600 * 39 = 725,400 years.

It would take 725,400 years to reach that star system. So it's impossible to ever get there with current technology.

The only way mankind could get there in 725,400 years would be to create a spaceship which could sustain 725,400 years of human generations. And that we also do not have the technology for. The spaceship would have to be massive because you would need enough people to have a large enough gene pool to avoid issues which could arise from inbreeding. You would also have to overcome the issue of having a sustainable food source that could last for 725,400 years. Not to mention the possibility of some sort of plague wiping out all human life on the ship or the humans on the ship killing each other because they lost their sanity. There are still about a bazillion other things which could go wrong in that 725,400 year period. The chances would still be outrageously high that the ship would never make it to its destination.

And besides all that, if you can create a spaceship capable of sustaining human life for that long, what's the fucking point of travelling to this star system in the first place? Why not just create a bunch of these spaceships?

That said, man it would be really fucking cool if we actually did it. But then there would even be a very high chance that the star system would have no planets which could sustain human life. So it would actually be pretty terrible if people made it there only to find that it was for nothing.

To add to those issues and a interesting point of view would be that hypothetically we somehow work out all of the mentioned issues and some how managed to create a plausible ship to sustain human life for 725k years.
I would assume that at that amount of time, the humans on that ship will somehow evolve to a Spaceship way of life. So when arriving to the new world it is totally possible that they wouldn't be able to survive in the standard way as know of today.

So essentially only way we could make it there is by warp drive or creating something to trave as fast or faster than the speed of light.

[Tradewind]

I believe you're referring to EmDrive. Even if EmDrive is proven to be real, AFAIK they're only capable of accelerating particles beyond the speed of light. Accelerating objects which, relative to what they're measuring, are absolutely massive would be a whole other story. Even if EmDrive is what they hope it is, it will still probably take decades before they develop anything practical.

The EmDrive isn't accelerating anything to FTL speeds. Not sure where you heard that as being confirmed. A few very early reports in 2015 took anomalous particle and field readings from the early Eagleworks tests and ran with it.

The EmDrive does appear to break a few pretty fundamentally accepted laws of physics, especially newton's third law (conservation of momentum), as it seems to produce no exhaust products while producing thrust, a very small amount of thrust. Which is...weird.

The whole "awesome factor" of the EmDrive is thrust without needing propellants, just electricity. So future EmDrive driven spacecraft can be much lighter as they don't need to carry fuel and under near constant propulsion and ergo, acceleration.

[Sorshen]

It is, but pointless given how long it would take.

Spontaneous process, Gibbs energy and entropy. The 'current tech' ship would break down long before it would get there.

[Docturphil]

The EmDrive isn't accelerating anything to FTL speeds. Not sure where you heard that as being confirmed. A few very early reports in 2015 took anomalous particle and field readings from the early Eagleworks tests and ran with it.

The EmDrive does appear to break a few pretty fundamentally accepted laws of physics, especially newton's third law (conservation of momentum), as it seems to produce no exhaust products while producing thrust, a very small amount of thrust. Which is...weird.

The whole "awesome factor" of the EmDrive is thrust without needing propellants, just electricity. So future EmDrive driven spacecraft can be much lighter as they don't need to carry fuel and under near constant propulsion and ergo, acceleration.

IDK... I read some article the other day mentioning EmDrive. I don't remember all the details but it talked about accelerating particles beyond light speed. Perhaps it was referring to something else and then moved on to the subject of EmDrive? idk... I'm no scientist.

But what I'm gathering from what you're saying is that in space using EmDrive, because you would continue to accelerate you could reach massive speeds. Is that about right? Wait, that can't be right. You would reach a maximum speed at some point, wouldn't you?

[Kathandira]

It's already been listened to by S.E.T.I and they didn't detect anything. That isn't to say nothing is there, just nothing with similar technology that we know how to pick up on.

Are we still using radio waves to send signals from SETIs arrays?

And if you know, how long does it take for such a signal to be sent there?

[Caelia]

Are we still using radio waves to send signals from SETIs arrays?

And if you know, how long does it take for such a signal to be sent there?

No clue, and radio waves travels at the speed of light in a vacuum , so for a radio wave to reach that solar system would take 39 years.

[Activi-T]

Are we still using radio waves to send signals from SETIs arrays?

And if you know, how long does it take for such a signal to be sent there?

Yes. Radio waves travel at the speed of light so in this case it'll take 39 years. If anyone is listening this is what they'd hear http://www.uk-charts.top-source.info/top-100-1978.shtml

[Afrospinach]

Time to build a nuclear pulse drive though it would still theoretically take a thousand years

Just use your microwave, I heard they produce thrust now.

[Tradewind]

IDK... I read some article the other day mentioning EmDrive. I don't remember all the details but it talked about accelerating particles beyond light speed. Perhaps it was referring to something else and then moved on to the subject of EmDrive? idk... I'm no scientist.

But what I'm gathering from what you're saying is that in space using EmDrive, because you would continue to accelerate you could reach massive speeds. Is that about right? Wait, that can't be right. You would reach a maximum speed at some point, wouldn't you?

In a total vacuum (ie. most of space) there's nothing to cause drag on the spacecraft. There are small particles (space dust) that can cause damage though if you plow through it for a few million miles, but ignoring that the only real limitation is the mass of the craft, but not until we're moving it at really really really fast speeds, so yes there is a theoretical maximum speed because of relativity. Per relativity as c increases, so does the energy needed. m is also proportional to c and, energy and mass are related too (I am shitting up the explanation hard here...there's way more to it when considering special relativity, rest mass/true mass etc.).

Yes, there will be a point at which a craft is travelling at very high speeds and unable to accelerate any more. At that point where we'd be talking about it's speed as a meaningful factor of the speed of light...where it becomes more practical to represent an object's speed as a % of c rather than in plain old miles per hour, and where we leave Newtonian models behind and enter the constraints and laws of special relativity (if you believe in that sort of thing).

At that point the energy required to continue accelerating the object becomes much more than we can feasibly generate (energy equivalent to many many many stars), approaching infinite energy the closer you get to the speed of light.

[Kontinuum]

The planets also are very close to each other. If a person was standing on one of the planet’s surface, they could gaze up and potentially see geological features or clouds of neighboring worlds, which would sometimes appear larger than the moon in Earth's sky.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/n...planets-around