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

[Logwyn]

I think in this instance, the person was talking about Trappist-1, as they mentioned it having 7 Earth-sized planets.
Sol has 8 planets, only two of which would be considered "Earth-sized", although Venus, Earth and Mars all exist within the "habitable zone".

"the sun" is kind of misleading though, but the context clues are there...

You would think someone being nit picky about terms would realize that using "the sun" as opposed to the star would be confusing was my point.

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?

I said the sun had 7 planets. He just named the planets?


Yes I said sun as people still know what I'm talking about.

You can be nit picky and I can be nit picky.

sun
sən/Submit
noun
noun: the sun
1.
the star around which the earth orbits.
any star in the universe similar to the sun, with or without planets.
plural noun: suns
2.
the light or warmth received from the earth's sun.
"we sat outside in the sun"
synonyms: sunshine, sunlight, daylight, light, warmth; More
literary
a person or thing regarded as a source of glory or inspiration or understanding.
"the rhetoric faded before the sun of reality"
literary
used with reference to someone's success or prosperity.
"the sun of the Plantagenets went down in clouds"
3.
literary
a day or a year.
"after going so many suns without food, I was sleeping"
Origin


I see no where that "the sun" would mean anything else about another star. Saying "THE SUN" means the one the earth orbits. See I can nit pick too if you can.

[Nihilist74]

They couldn't all be in the right orbit around their star to have just the right amount of solar radiation?

[Zantos]

This planet has produced more than one sentient life form in the human context though. Neanderthals were sentient. Homo heidelbergensis was sentient. Both buried their dead (the latter is disputable, but stronger evidenced over the last few years). Burying dead, in the context of their wider culture indicates the ability to think abstractly and tell the difference between "alive" and "dead". It isn't know if Homo Erectus buried their dead, but homo erectus wore clothes, used tools and was capable of ingenuity, also indicating sentience.

Purely speaking on a science aspect, these were our predecessors. Things that were a part of our evolutionary line. They didn't live along side of us. They were all a part of us. I am speaking strictly about producing more then one sentient life form of a higher intelligence. They evolved into us. However, we do not see such an evolutionary line in any other form. We are the only one to have been created and evolved on this planet.

That is what I get towards. This planet failed to create even 2 life forms of advanced intelligence that coexist.

Furthermore, your statement is anti-scientific. It's just like the search for water on Mars in a sense. If they find life on Mars, or detect chloraphyl on a distant planet, it will be the most momentous discovery in human history, bar none. It is essential that something so important be carefully proven over time and stand as the culmination of a body of evidence. If for example, tomorrow NASA announced to the world they discovered Chloraphyl, and probably plant life, around a star 100 light years away, it would be very far from conclusive in and of itself without a wealth of scientific evidence about the qualities of that star that make the finding likely. Furthermore it would have to be confirmed, such as independent teams building independent space observatories and checking the planet's composition to make sure it isn't a false positive. A false positive for such an important discovery would be a catastrophe.

Announcements like this are one step along the way to the planet that the "biosignature" announcement arrives from. NASA has hunted water on Mars across that planet for 30 years... and they had a good idea where to look for it, but they adopted a very methodical approach. Watching water-ice sublimating came only at the end of it. And even still, orbital observations of water flows are still disputed (though probable), and one of the next Mars landers will likely go to a "damp soil" region.

My statement is very scientific. In science, you need to be open to all the possibilities that could influence each and every factor in any slight way. It could impact things in such a way that we don't even Consider the possibility that life is on a planet in a different form. For example, what if a planet has a race that has the capability of flight? They wouldn't need vehicles. Not to mention that they may not even have found a way to produce Co2, or that it is even an element on their planet that is produced naturally.

It Will be a monumental discovery if they detect chlorophyll. One that I would welcome. However, there isn't any level of certainty that any other life bearing planets developed anything to produce that. Of course they would need to have a wealth of confirmation. But, like I said, what if a planet like that doesn't exist?


I just view them as using a very narrow range of possibilities and hoping it works. Who knows what the chances are of life developing, let alone that its enough like ours that we can detect it by looking for signs that we would expect to see from our own planet.

[gyrados]

come on just disclose aliens exist nasa come on already or the ssp lol

[Garnier Fructis]

That is what I get towards. This planet failed to create even 2 life forms of advanced intelligence that coexist.

And we're still lacking an explanation for why this is relevant.

[Zantos]

And we're still lacking an explanation for why this is relevant.

No you're not. I already explained that. If not even on our planet, one that has been Proven to be able to produce an advanced life form, could not even manage it a second time, then it stands to reason that they cannot expect another planet that has different conditions to produce an advanced life form that is identical enough to our own that they would give off the same signs as we would.

The chances of an advanced life form are low. Yet they are trying to take that Very limited data and apply it to planets thousands of years away and Hope that they created identical conditions to our planet and that they produced an advanced life form that is like us.

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Do you have the same mentality about other things? For example, would you also say, "I don't care about incremental steps in the study of fusion, I want to see a a finished fusion reactor that can power a city or larger."?

Just curious. Life would be kind of boring that way.

No, and that is a pretty drastic jump. This isn't a new announcement. This isn't a step further along the process. They have announced other planets. They have a list of planets they are able to look at. This is just the biggest one at once.

[Garnier Fructis]

No you're not. I already explained that. If not even on our planet, one that has been Proven to be able to produce an advanced life form, could not even manage it a second time, then it stands to reason that they cannot expect another planet that has different conditions to produce an advanced life form that is identical enough to our own that they would give off the same signs as we would.

That's not the only thing we're looking for. But either way, if you're proposing that they send some other kind of signal through interstellar space then you're basically proposing new physics.

[Zantos]

That's not the only thing we're looking for. But either way, if you're proposing that they send some other kind of signal through interstellar space then you're basically proposing new physics.

And that is what I am getting at. That is my point. They may be beyond us and have discovered new physics. Their thought process may have been different from the start and they traveled down a vastly different path in science and made discoveries that we didn't. This is science we are talking about. There are any number of factors that could attribute to our understanding being completely wrong. We don't know how another race on another planet under different conditions has developed. We simply don't know.

We look for the signs that we Do know of. That is what I criticize. They are not thinking of the possibilities that another species may be out there, but operating under different conditions or under a different understanding of science and physics. I understand Why they look for what they do, which is why they need to be given more funding so their resources are not so limited as to force them to lower their search to a lower number of planets.

[araine]

39 light years from Earth.

thats fairly close, in space distance that is but not close enough to allow us to have right wingers destroy this earth due to corporate GREED

[Rennadrel]

Maybe they should stop looking at the stars and find a feasible way to travel through space in a significantly faster time period than we currently can do so and work on that so we can colonize other planets outside our solar system.

[Orange Joe]

You would think someone being nit picky about terms would realize that using "the sun" as opposed to the star would be confusing was my point.

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You can be nit picky and I can be nit picky.

sun
sən/Submit
noun
noun: the sun
1.
the star around which the earth orbits.
any star in the universe similar to the sun, with or without planets.
plural noun: suns
2.
the light or warmth received from the earth's sun.
"we sat outside in the sun"
synonyms: sunshine, sunlight, daylight, light, warmth; More
literary
a person or thing regarded as a source of glory or inspiration or understanding.
"the rhetoric faded before the sun of reality"
literary
used with reference to someone's success or prosperity.
"the sun of the Plantagenets went down in clouds"
3.
literary
a day or a year.
"after going so many suns without food, I was sleeping"
Origin


I see no where that "the sun" would mean anything else about another star. Saying "THE SUN" means the one the earth orbits. See I can nit pick too if you can.

Wait what? How am I being nit picky? Not even sure what your problem is.

[Kontinuum]

[Puupi]

Read it in the paper this morning. Pretty neat.

That's what newspapers are good for; reading 2-3 days old news.

[Release]

And that is what I am getting at. That is my point. They may be beyond us and have discovered new physics. Their thought process may have been different from the start and they traveled down a vastly different path in science and made discoveries that we didn't. This is science we are talking about. There are any number of factors that could attribute to our understanding being completely wrong. We don't know how another race on another planet under different conditions has developed. We simply don't know.

We look for the signs that we Do know of. That is what I criticize. They are not thinking of the possibilities that another species may be out there, but operating under different conditions or under a different understanding of science and physics. I understand Why they look for what they do, which is why they need to be given more funding so their resources are not so limited as to force them to lower their search to a lower number of planets.

This is so unfair. The only guarantee NASA has in it's search for intelligent life is Earth. It seems entirely reasonable to me to use Earth as a base in looking for other species, where else would you have them start? A habitable zone around a planets sun on a rocky planet with water in a habitable part of the Galaxy seems to me by far the most logical place to start looking at all life on Earth.

[Deleted]

That's what newspapers are good for; reading 2-3 days old news.

Still took you 36 hours to reply, even with using the internet :thinking:

[Cancun]

And that is what I am getting at. That is my point. They may be beyond us and have discovered new physics. Their thought process may have been different from the start and they traveled down a vastly different path in science and made discoveries that we didn't. This is science we are talking about. There are any number of factors that could attribute to our understanding being completely wrong. We don't know how another race on another planet under different conditions has developed. We simply don't know.

We look for the signs that we Do know of. That is what I criticize. They are not thinking of the possibilities that another species may be out there, but operating under different conditions or under a different understanding of science and physics. I understand Why they look for what they do, which is why they need to be given more funding so their resources are not so limited as to force them to lower their search to a lower number of planets.

It's like you are missing the entire point, sorry. The point is not to find little green men to kill us, the point is to find another rock WE can live on. Until mankind spreads to other planets, our entire existence is subject the randomness of viruses, asteroids hitting the earth, us destroying the earth, and any number of cataclysmic things, that would be negated by being on more planets.

[Garnier Fructis]

And that is what I am getting at. That is my point. They may be beyond us and have discovered new physics. Their thought process may have been different from the start and they traveled down a vastly different path in science and made discoveries that we didn't. This is science we are talking about. There are any number of factors that could attribute to our understanding being completely wrong. We don't know how another race on another planet under different conditions has developed. We simply don't know.

Considering you're just appealing to the possibility of wild new physics without any reason or motivation aside from 'it might be so,' no. This isn't science.

We look for the signs that we Do know of. That is what I criticize. They are not thinking of the possibilities that another species may be out there, but operating under different conditions or under a different understanding of science and physics.

Mostly because you cannot actually do anything with such a possibility. Every single piece of equipment we have, every single tool of analysis we have, depend totally on our understanding of physics. How do you propose we look for things that we don't have the instruments to look for, and when we have zero knowledge of how to build such instruments? All of this assuming of course, that such wildly different physics even exists.

I understand Why they look for what they do, which is why they need to be given more funding so their resources are not so limited as to force them to lower their search to a lower number of planets.

You are essentially saying we should douche money on them and demand something they are not capable of doing. You cannot simply legislate breakthroughs in physics.

[Zantos]

Considering you're just appealing to the possibility of wild new physics without any reason or motivation aside from 'it might be so,' no. This isn't science.

I am sorry we don't see eye to eye on this. Considering that our understanding is constantly expanding and changing on everything, I don't see how you can sit there and say that it isn't science. Its the very nature of science. You expand upon our knowledge and make new discoveries. I will stand by my point. We only search for life using such narrow parameters purely because that is all they can afford to given their limited resources.

Mostly because you cannot actually do anything with such a possibility. Every single piece of equipment we have, every single tool of analysis we have, depend totally on our understanding of physics. How do you propose we look for things that we don't have the instruments to look for, and when we have zero knowledge of how to build such instruments? All of this assuming of course, that such wildly different physics even exists.

How do I purpose we look for things that we don't have the instruments for? First step would be to give them more funding. Second step would be for them to start trying to actually research and develop some things. Like starting to terraform the moon would provide a wealth of knowledge. Some of it would surely translate to what we could look for to see if another race dwells on a planet that they had to terraform. It is simple things like this, baby steps in trying to advance our own civilization in the space exploration field, that will help to yield and expand upon our understanding. As a byproduct, we would then start to open ourselves to the possibility that there may be life on a planet that we deem uninhabitable, but actually is a planet that an alien race terraformed to be able to live on. As for other parts, that is just going to take time and resources to research and study.

You are essentially saying we should douche money on them and demand something they are not capable of doing. You cannot simply legislate breakthroughs in physics.

No, I am saying they need more money to fund their research. I am not demanding anything. So please, point to where I did. I am saying they need more funding then what they get so they can actually start to undertake Real research. Something more then looking through a telescope for another planet to add to their ever growing list of planets that could maybe house life. They need to stop having their funding cut. Heck, the last administration wanted them to be cut down to just $19billion. That simply isn't enough to make some good progress.

[Skroe]

I am sorry we don't see eye to eye on this. Considering that our understanding is constantly expanding and changing on everything, I don't see how you can sit there and say that it isn't science. Its the very nature of science. You expand upon our knowledge and make new discoveries. I will stand by my point. We only search for life using such narrow parameters purely because that is all they can afford to given their limited resources.



How do I purpose we look for things that we don't have the instruments for? First step would be to give them more funding. Second step would be for them to start trying to actually research and develop some things. Like starting to terraform the moon would provide a wealth of knowledge. Some of it would surely translate to what we could look for to see if another race dwells on a planet that they had to terraform. It is simple things like this, baby steps in trying to advance our own civilization in the space exploration field, that will help to yield and expand upon our understanding. As a byproduct, we would then start to open ourselves to the possibility that there may be life on a planet that we deem uninhabitable, but actually is a planet that an alien race terraformed to be able to live on. As for other parts, that is just going to take time and resources to research and study.



No, I am saying they need more money to fund their research. I am not demanding anything. So please, point to where I did. I am saying they need more funding then what they get so they can actually start to undertake Real research. Something more then looking through a telescope for another planet to add to their ever growing list of planets that could maybe house life. They need to stop having their funding cut. Heck, the last administration wanted them to be cut down to just $19billion. That simply isn't enough to make some good progress.

NASA's funding hasn't been cut in years, and when the cuts were happening, it was mostly at the hands of Obama. NASA's actually been one of the few agencies in the government that's seen fairly consistent funding increases. That's because Congressional Democrats and Republicans forged a priorities consensus after Obama rolled out his (rather terrible) 2010 NASA plan. And every budgetary year, from 2011-2017 was filled with the same story: Obama putting up a budget for NASA that lowballed exploration and space science and lavishly funded Earth science. Congress said "hahaha no." They then passed their higher topline budget anyway, and Obama signed it while his Administrator blasted Congress for daring to have a differenting opinion.

And let's be clear: Obama was dead wrong and Congressional Democrats + Republicans were in the right.

The "myth of the NASA budget cuts" needs to die in a bonfire because it downplays the poor organization, poor management and poor priorities of NASA, up until around 2012. The good news is, NASA today is in pretty good shape overall.

Let's take Space Science, which is most relevant to this article.

This is the NASA budget in 2015. Notice the slices of the pie.


You will note the "Science" section is $5.2 billion that year, 29% of NASA's budget. You will note in that section "JWST, -1.94%". This refers to the James Webb Space Telescope. This monstrosity.




10 years behind schedule. $6.5 billion over budget. The JWST will produce important science but it is the single most miserably managed program in modern NASA history. So that "zeroing" in the budget pie there doesn't reflect it being canceled. Rather, due to years of mismanagement, the JWST was moved out of the Space Missions Directorate and into it's own office that reported directly to the NASA Administrator. While still a "Space Mission" in principle, NASA Headquarters lost confidence in SMD in actually being able to run the program, mvoing around 400-$600 billion out of the SMD budget.

And how did SMD respond? By whining that Space Science was underfunded. What they actually meant is that their slice of the pie shrunk, because the JWST was taken out of their hands.

Furthermore the JWST's immense costs wiped out about a dozen other planetary and space science missions. It gets more money in a year, than entire Mars missions do in eight. The entire cost of the Europa orbiter to launch in 2022-20224 will be about four years worth of JWST funding... and JWSThas been recieving money like this for over 13 years. Don't believe me? Read this and weep.



This is what ONE Space Telescope has done. This isn't Congress. This isn't Democrats or Republicans. It is a program that ran wildly out of control and ate, and ate and ate larger parts of the budget.

THe "NASA is underfunded meme" just normalizes the true problems plaguing the agency and ascribe it to money. It's not. Here are the reforms that one of NASA's (now retired) leaders and Space Shuttle program manager, Wayne Hale just said he would make if he were Trump's administrator.
https://waynehale.wordpress.com/2017...ing-for-a-day/

Topic 1: break down inter-center rivalry. NASA was established in 1958 as a collection of 10 loosely federated fiefdoms and it has never broken out of that paradigm. If you ask a typical NASA employee who they work for, the response will be their center, not the agency. Can’t blame them; they are hired through a center, promotions and career advancements come through their center, the very culture of the organization enforces loyalty to a center. Every center has its local politicians and politics centered on local interests, every center has its own history and area of expertise, and every employee is inculcated with the beliefs and norms. Centers sometimes seem united only in their disdain for NASA Headquarters. Not that anybody openly works to sabotage direction from Headquarters, they just bend the direction toward what their individual project and center would like to do. Competition for scarce resources drives rivalries between centers. In addition, there is a huge ‘not invented here’ problem everywhere. Not just with any idea from an organization outside NASA but also with any idea from another center. It makes the workforce ready to find fault, slow to see the advantages of any new thing not born from within their own organization. Secretive, competitive, and ultimately destructive of the larger purpose, these behaviors have been worse in the past but are still present. My solution: make people move. Many organizations both government and industry do this as a matter of course. Move not just the senior leaders, but the journeyman workers. Take the center name off the badges. Develop a ‘Bureau of Personnel” to centralize promotions, bonuses, and career advancement. No small tasks these.


Topic 2: mind numbing bureaucracy. The organization has evolved, as all bureaucracies do, to the point where too many people can say ‘no’ to any action. In the early days of NASA, this was not so. It is good to have checks and balances and oversight, but the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of (electronic) paperwork, diffuse responsibility, and inaction. The system now has watchers watching watchers watching doers – and always with criticism for the doer. Corrective action will take serious attention from any leader. Achieving the proper balance may well be impossible and the best we can hope for is to swing decision making back to the lowest level possible. Gibbs Rule #13 applies here: Never involve the Lawyers.


Topic 3: the cultural imperative to make everything perfect. This is a very sensitive topic for me. I have personal been involved with decisions that were made with too little information, riding roughshod over the experts in the field. But these days, after Columbia, the agency is paralyzed by requiring too much: too much data, too many tests, too much analysis. In the Apollo days, this was not so. We – and I am a guilty party in this – have trained the work force to make everything perfect before any project can proceed. In this business, nothing is ever perfect. Space flight involves risk, it can never be completely eliminated. But real space flight is actual flight, not studies and ground tests. It is difficult to find the balance of having done enough to be reasonably sure of success and safety and to get on with a project and actually fly. I hate the term ‘risk averse,’ but as much as it makes my teeth grate, the effect of wanting to make every detail perfect has the same outcome as cowardice: never flying.

I would also add, per other proposals, to make the NASA Administrator a 10 year, non-political position (similar to the director of the FBI, well, nominally), overseen by a National Space Council that is half experts, half congressional appointees. The NSC would nominate an Administrator from Industry or Academia, the President would second the nomination and the Senate would vote to approve. NASA priorities would be decided by the NSC that is chaired by the Administrator, and priorities would be decided by the NSC. I'm basically describing turning NASA into something like the Federal Reserve System.

I would also break up NASA funding into 1, 2 and 5 year blocks and move programs on longer timelines that are more ambitions onto the mandatory spending side of the budget, thereby making the funding levels for them predictable. The way it's been for two decades, where the budget of every program next year is a guessing game, has been a disaster. This may mean Congress only legislates say, $5 billion of NASA funding on an annual basis, but it would guarantee the ISS or something, consistent and predictable funding levels on a 5 year funding horizon, allowing contractors (who do the actual work of the Space program) to make their investments appropriately. Considering it takes 36 months to build a modest Atlas V rocket, this is entirely consistent with the timescales of space missions.

I would move climate science entirely to the NOAA, though joint-NASA/NOAA projects would be possible.

I would reconstitute the NASA predecessor, NACA, and move aerospace research to it, and have it funded largely through the Air Force budget.

Lastly moving manned spaceflight out of NASA into its own agency, is something that should be discussed.

All this amounts to effectively severing the link that binds NASA to a Presidential Administration, which has been the bane of the agencies existence as it has linked its major programs to the "vision" of the President (spoilers: there hasn't been a president with a Space vision, except for Johnson... Kennedy still called space "the heavens" in a non-poetic, entirely serious manner for crying out loud). NASA needs to do its work on 5, 10 and 15 year time scales, and that is PERFECT for pulling the Agency closer into an association with Congress or quasi-independence like the Fed, than making it just another Presidential Cabinet Agency. The President should have little say over what NASA does.


Will NASA need more money in years ahead? Yes. A single manned mars mission will take 11 SLS Block II launches over a period of 2 years, which comes out to about $7 billion in launch costs alone (before you put anything in those rockets), over the 5 years it would take to build all 11 rockets. NASA's budget will need to be increased by around 40% in the late 2020s /early 2030s to finance all of that for a late 2030s / early 2040s Mars date. But that must come after SUBSTANTIAL agency reform that puts an end to Game of Thrones: NASA Edition.

The NASA is underfunded meme must simply die.

[Zantos]

The NASA is underfunded meme must simply die.

I simply googled it yesterday and saw that there was a cut planned by the obama administration for this year. So forgive me if I somehow got it wrong.