Astronomers have found potential habitable planet

[StayTuned]

Because the Deep Field, for example, isn't really that much zoomed in. The Hubble Telescope just has extraordinary capability to gather light, much more than, say, the human eye, so it can see a lot of galaxies in that portion of the night sky. Also, individual galaxies in the Deep Field emit billions of times more light than any given planet, and they're 10^14 times bigger in diameter, on average, than any given planet. Lets take this example. This planet is 42 light years away from Earth, and it's 10^14 times smaller than a galaxy with a diameter of 100 000 light years. The farthest galaxy we could ever image (due to the fact the universe has a limit beyond which light hasn't yet reached us) is 13.7 billion (1.37x10^10) light years away, and we've managed to image galaxies at 13 billion light years away, just barely.

Assuming that planet is 100 light years away from us (to simplify things), imaging it would be like trying to image a galaxy with a diameter of 100 000 light years that is 10^14 times farther away from us than the same planet, which would mean, 10^16 light years away, which is a million times more than what we can barely image today.

That actually made a lot of sense

[Obamatheone]

If we find an alien biosphere, chances are we can't simply go there and live at the open air. It would be every bit as troublesome as living in a barren, and even worse, because of the corrosive effect of life on equipment. We would have to completely terraform the planet.

And if we have to terraform something anyway, why not terraforming a barren world instead of a living one, which could be the target of a lot of research instead?

Corrosive effect of life on equipment? WTF does that mean? Alien snails are going to eat steel?
Teraforming a planet is very much sci-fiction.

The whole idea of a habitable world is one in which we can inhabit.

---------- Post added 2012-11-12 at 08:07 AM ----------

Colonizing space is vital for survival, though. Earth will die, if not by us or some natural disaster, the sun will die and take us with it. Even the universe will die, and the sooner we get to space, the sooner we can go beyond.

Wont happen for millions if not billions of years.

---------- Post added 2012-11-12 at 08:08 AM ----------

yeah they don't even know what the adverse effects of low gravity are, there are practically countless factors that weigh into colonization, everything could be fine but the oxygen ratio might be off, or the pressure might be different, or there might be flesh eating bacteria in the water. would you really risk potential mutation and death over curiosity. They don't know that much about it, only that its a good possibility, although i wouldn't sign up for the suicide mission unless it was the only choice.

I like the idea of us branching out, eventually it will be the only means of survival if we continue at the same rate of consumption, although i don't think i could live in space for very long or a bio dome of sorts after a while i think i'd probably go mad. (just the thought of never being able to go outside and breath fresh air or walk on the beach or go camping, all those things we take for granted most ppl would very soon miss these privileges)

the biggest problem with all these space discoveries is distance, currently there is just no way of travelling such distances in any reasonable amount of time, and doing so is a complete gamble, you could get there and find nothing whatsoever and it could be the most hospitable place you've ever seen.

we have adapted quite well and can survive quite well under some terrible conditions, but there are limits to what you can withstand over long periods, and there is a reason why we started here, this planet is specifically tailored to our chemistry and everything that makes us work, theres a good chance we'll never be able to survive on another 'earth' simply because its not this earth.

Artificial gravity is child's play. We can easily do that now.
Potential mutation? ROFL!!! Ohh I remember this episode. Its the episode of family guy that they nuclear waste landed in the yard?


You could potentially travel to another star using a spaceship colony. You wouldn't get there but your descendants could.
The problem is like you said, what if its a shithole?

There is no magical attachment to this planet. We can easily live on some other planet.

[Heathy]

It still doesn't make it any less of a gamble, 581g is closer, if we could travel at half light speed, it would still take 40 years to get there, you could send a probe ahead but even when the space ship is half way there the signal from the planet would still probably take 10 years to reach you, so you'd only know if it was a complete waste of time when you practically there, even then over the next 10 years or so something catastrophic could happen and when you arrive its nothing but a barren wasteland.

best case scenario, we never find a planet identical to this one. or there is one, in a completely different galaxy. the absolute best you could hope for is living in an artificial complex on titan or mars. I very much doubt there is a planet we can just go to and live happily ever after.

[Boogums]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49735325.../#.UJtGGGJrVT4



Figured it was only a matter of time. Nothing definite yet, but we're getting there. 42 light years (lol 42) is not that far considering.

Yea, only 246,896,992,000,000 miles.

[Heathy]

We can easily live on some other planet.

but this is a complete fallacy, because its taken millions of years for us to adapt to the environment as it is, you cannot just go to another planet and breath the air/bask in the sunlight/drink water/eat the plants and animals.. and yes mutation is real, if you take prolonged exposure to radiation you will die. recently there was a news article on butterflies' around Chernobyl and how they have mutated over the years.

gee just look up the factors that make this planet the way it is, all the factors that attribute to our survival it really is dumb luck that we are even here, the composition of the atmosphere the pressure the radiation levels the amount of sun light we get, the composition of the water we drink, the food we eat, everything could be completely different on this second earth and you can't just ignore millions of years of evolution. which is a completely separate argument for that second planet, for the billions of years thats been there it has its own history of change, we have no idea what is there what was there, if they are still there, what killed everything off when it was there/if/when/how/why all these questions with no answers.

also, i wouldn't care if my descendants get there, who;s gunna sign up for a death mission, with the premise of 'oh you won't actually survive the journey but your sons son might' lol sign me pfft no thanks ill just die here. maybe they grow up to realise they don't want to be there, what kind of person would you be then? bringing a person into the ship (i was going to say world) a moment old and its already forced into a suicide mission.. great parenting from the get go.

there are so many thing that could go wrong or just will not work entirely, we could get there find an incurable airborne disease or WE could introduce something that kills everything off.. the list of possibilities is pretty lengthy if not endless.

heres another completely random one, what if you get there and the planet is mostly fine chemically but it suffers from constant earth quakes or, 1000mph winds or its constantly bombarded by asteroids.. any of this could be a reality you just wouldn't know until you get there. the most obvious ones are planet wide events that change the composition of the many layers that make up the planet, it could be going through any stage of its life cycle. like this planet it was never always a paradise for life at one point it was a molten rock. then it had monsters walking all over it, then it was molten again.. all of this over insane amounts of time. there really is no telling what has lived and died and mutated over all that time, there could be organisms there that do practically anything there could be illnesses that wiped out the previous indigenous life and is just waiting for someone to come along and wipe them out too. There are things on this planet that will kill you outright and that is here, where we have lived since, forever, so you can only imagine the extent of what could be possible on a completely alien world. I'm willing to bet money that even if we did land on a new earth and everything was visually fine, it would still take decades before the doors open, the amount of testing that would need to be done to ensure safety could take a lifetime. examining samples of practically everything you could come in contact with to make sure its not contaminated with something nasty.

this is all speculation and it could be completely in reverse of that i am aware, the water there could be so special it extends your life span by 25 years. but the problem which is distance will always be an issue, no matter how many probes you send from here, we will never get current data it will always be 'as it was at this time' to get an accurate reading even with an advanced science fiction probe that can travel at light speed, you will still need to actually get there to see what it is like. so it will never stop being a gamble.

[Deleted]

Corrosive effect of life on equipment? WTF does that mean? Alien snails are going to eat steel?
Teraforming a planet is very much sci-fiction.

I got ahead of myself, i was meaning to write "life-sustaining environment". Whatever environments where life is around are going to be either oxidating or reducing, because redox chemistry is the biggest source of chemical energy for life.

The whole idea of a habitable world is one in which we can inhabit.

As in being able to step out of the spaceship just as if you were on Earth?

Haha good luck with that one!

Wont happen for millions if not billions of years.

We better be ready as soon as possible. We don't know what technical problems might arise that stump our progress!

[mmines]

You know it's things like this that just makes me wish I could come back several generations later to see how far we've come. And the biggest thing about this planet is that it's close enough that we may someday be able to image it directly rather than seeing wobbles in space or something like that around the star.