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

[Chickat]

I cant imagine an engine that could get us there in under 1000 years. That seems like a pipe dream engine anyways. That puts that engine at 700 times more powerful than our current engines. Thats still too far to mean anything to me as Ill be way dead. An engine that could propel us to that speed would be nice, but we still need to develop a way to warp space or we will never leave our solar systems anytime in the next few hundred years.

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An engine moving 700 times faster than new horizons would take us what a week to reach Pluto from here?

[Tradewind]

I cant imagine an engine that could get us there in under 1000 years. That seems like a pipe dream engine anyways. That puts that engine at 700 times more powerful than our current engines. Thats still too far to mean anything to me as Ill be way dead. An engine that could propel us to that speed would be nice, but we still need to develop a way to warp space or we will never leave our solar systems anytime in the next few hundred years.

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An engine moving 700 times faster than new horizons would take us what a week to reach Pluto from here?

Doesn't necessarily need to be more powerful, it just has to be able to provide constant controlled acceleration and have the fuel to sustain that acceleration to the physical threshold.

A nuclear powered EmDrive producing only 1.2mN/kW for a few weeks could very well outpace a typical chemical rocket producing 60-100+mN/kW accelerating an object within a finite period of time in which it can burn all of its fuel (or half of, if they wanna come home), and could continue to accelerate the ship beyond that.

[Docturphil]

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.

So we're talking what, like 10% of the speed of light for a bus sized craft?

[Deleted]

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

Right now, some steam bot is confused as to why it can't register this game key

[Skroe]

We didn't even make it past the first page before EM-Drive came up. Sigh

[Wyrt]

Which one has sentient life and how long until humans try to fuck it?

[Easo]

Which one has sentient life and how long until humans try to fuck it?

Obviously we have this type of comment... -.-
No, stop whining about how humans are bad. It became old long time ago.

[Garnier Fructis]

We didn't even make it past the first page before EM-Drive came up. Sigh

I know, it's (em)driving me crazy.

[Zantos]

I was disappointed honestly. They were acting like this was a huge, amazing announcement. I don't consider hearing about the hundredth planet that could have life by the standards they use to be big news. I mean really, they are Far from ever visiting or even seeing the surface of these planets. Who cares if they are earth sized and in the zone they deemed to be the only one possible for life?

I will applaud them and any news they give if, and Only if, they discover something truly revolutionary. Not yet another planet that may or may not have life that they cannot test.

[Tradewind]

So we're talking what, like 10% of the speed of light for a bus sized craft?

Unlikely. Shitty napkin math says that'd require 4.5 billion billion joules (4.5e+18J) of energy to achieve with a ~10,000kg bus. About 45,000,000,000,000 megawatts, that's not even accounting at all for the bus' increase of mass in that time...

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We didn't even make it past the first page before EM-Drive came up. Sigh

It is unfortunate that a bunch of bloggers and shit went crazy with it back a few years ago with the "NASA discovered warp drive!" nonsense.

At the same time it's kind of impressive that shit spread so widely lol.

[Skroe]

I was disappointed honestly. They were acting like this was a huge, amazing announcement. I don't consider hearing about the hundredth planet that could have life by the standards they use to be big news. I mean really, they are Far from ever visiting or even seeing the surface of these planets. Who cares if they are earth sized and in the zone they deemed to be the only one possible for life?

I will applaud them and any news they give if, and Only if, they discover something truly revolutionary. Not yet another planet that may or may not have life that they cannot test.

They can test though. If TRAPPIST-1 has life and a NASA of their own, let's say, and were looking at our Solar System, they'd see 3 worlds capable of supporting life potentially (Venus, Earth, Mars). They could then calculate how much energy from the sun each planet receives, and with the right instruments, it's atmospheric composition.

And most notably: they'd be able to tell that the middle planet in that set will show the presence of chlorophyll from the planet's reflection spectrum.

It's worth noting, on that note, that Earth isn't even within the ideal part of the Solar System's habitable zone. Mars is better positioned. But it's too small mass and failed internal dynamo failed to keep a warming, life sustaining atmosphere. But 4 billion years ago, conditions on Mars were much better than Earth for the emergence of life. Considering the Trappist-1 system is just 500 million years old, there is an opportunity to see an early-solar system analog, if nothing else.

[Garnier Fructis]

Unlikely. Shitty napkin math says that'd require 4.5 billion billion joules (4.5e+18J) of energy to achieve with a ~10,000kg bus. About 45,000,000,000,000 megawatts, that's not even accounting at all for the bus' increase of mass in that time...

Increase of mass?

[Caaethil]

Hang, this tail chasing has made me dizzy.

My point is that we don't actually have any technology even remotely resembling terraforming. To even bring that up is ridiculous. If we can find a rock that we can live on and get to, we will just go and live there. End of story. No Star Trek, no Spock.

The poster you initially quoted was saying that another system with seven Earth-like planet implies it has already been terraformed. Not by us, by aliens.

[Zantos]

They can test though. If TRAPPIST-1 has life and a NASA of their own, let's say, and were looking at our Solar System, they'd see 3 worlds capable of supporting life potentially (Venus, Earth, Mars). They could then calculate how much energy from the sun each planet receives, and with the right instruments, it's atmospheric composition.

And most notably: they'd be able to tell that the middle planet in that set will show the presence of chlorophyll from the planet's reflection spectrum.

It's worth noting, on that note, that Earth isn't even within the ideal part of the Solar System's habitable zone. Mars is better positioned. But it's too small mass and failed internal dynamo failed to keep a warming, life sustaining atmosphere. But 4 billion years ago, conditions on Mars were much better than Earth for the emergence of life. Considering the Trappist-1 system is just 500 million years old, there is an opportunity to see an early-solar system analog, if nothing else.

But that is the thing, that is by Our standards. Like you said, by Our standards, they wouldn't consider Earth.

Now, if my understanding is correct, and correct me if I am wrong, in order for Chlorophyll to be in the reflection spectrum, plants must be around. Is this right? If so, that is a just a shining example as to how short sighted Nasa is by looking for things like us. This planet may have life, but it may have developed in a fundamentally different way. Their plants may not function like ours do, so chlorophyll may not even be in its light spectrum. Thus Nasa would go along to the next planet.

They cannot detect life until they can go there. Reason is for what I stated above. To many variables have to be Exactly like us in order for us to detect them. They don't look at the realm of possibility that things may have developed differently on that planet, yet it may still harbor life. The same then, would possibly be true for that planet if it is as advanced as us.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

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.

It makes sense...after all...we're in the Milky Way

[Tijuana]

The poster you initially quoted was saying that another system with seven Earth-like planet implies it has already been terraformed. Not by us, by aliens.

Oh snap. Ok then. That is amusing but, I think if they had tech that advanced, they would have said hello by now.

[Garnier Fructis]

Fundamentally, the idea that life may have evolved in a radically different way can't be ruled out, but is essentially a useless thing to consider for anyone intending to actually do any analysis or look for life.

[Tradewind]

Increase of mass?

Not as in "mass" mass, as the object's rest mass remains unchanged. But under special relativity, as energy increases, so must mass....inertia may be more "accurate" rather than mass, to avoid confusion.

Using the Lorentz factor for calculating relativistic mass:
m=m0/√(1−v^2/c^2)

With m0 as the rest mass, and as v approaches c, the value of m gets pretty huge.

[Yvaelle]

I propose we rename Trappist-1 to Corellia, after the Corellian System in Star Wars (which an ancient race created by teleporting five entire habitable planets into the same system, and putting them all in stable habitable zone orbits)

I'm not saying 7 Earths in the same system was aliens.... I'm just saying that those aliens might also be Jedi/Sith

[Stormspark]

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

Nah, we just need to get off our butts and invent FTL travel already. Or just use one of these, too bad we don't have them either.