NASA experts discover the closest Earth-
like planet just 31 light years away
that could be habitable
Daily Mail (UK),
by
Peter Lloyd
Original Article
Posted By: Imright,
8/2/2019 4:03:07 PM
Nasa's planet spotting telescope has uncovered another three planets, which scientists say include the first nearby super-Earth spotted by TESS that could be habitable. The planet, called GJ 357 d, orbits a star around 31 light years away in the so-called habitable zone, an area far enough from its star to not be too hot but close enough to not be too cold. In this region, it is possible for liquid water to exist on the surface of a planet if it is rocky, although further research is needed to work out whether GJ 357 d's atmosphere is dense and warm enough to host liquid water.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
GoodDeal 8/2/2019 4:21:38 PM (No. 141088)
Perfect place to send The Squad, and all dimwit prez candidates to form their brave new world with free everything from scratch.
6 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
DVC 8/2/2019 4:23:23 PM (No. 141090)
As far from the sun as Mars.
Going to be cold, and no info yet on whether it's large enough to have a reasonably dense atmosphere. This is Mar's problem, too small to hang on to much atmosphere.
2 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
pensom2 8/2/2019 4:26:42 PM (No. 141094)
Sorta depends also on whether that planet's sun is hotter, cooler, or equal to ours.
1 person likes this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
pensom2 8/2/2019 4:30:33 PM (No. 141097)
Okay, looks like it receives as much "solar energy" from it's sun/star as Mars does from ours. Of course, our sun is going through a sun storm phase in which it sends out more energy, which is causing our minor global warming, regardless of the changes in the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.
2 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
JL80863 8/2/2019 5:00:53 PM (No. 141121)
How far is that in "dog years"?
9 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Moritz55 8/2/2019 5:03:25 PM (No. 141122)
Thanks for posting this article
3 people like this.
Its called Minnesota
5 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
snakeoil 8/2/2019 5:44:08 PM (No. 141149)
Am not a particularly religious individual. But am always amazed that these types of articles never even consider the possibility of the existence of God. Could just be the Universe and everything in it were created by God who chose to put life in only one spot and that all of the dots of light in the night sky were put there to confuse fireflies during mating season.
5 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
Philipsonh 8/2/2019 6:07:40 PM (No. 141172)
"JUST" 31 light years away won't fit on anyone's calculator, unless it will hold approx 180 trillion , with a 'T'. That's 180,000,000,000,000. At least that number of digits will not fit on mine. Nobody's visiting there very soon.
2 people like this.
Traveling at 186,000 miles per second X the number of seconds in 31 years = I don't know how many miles away this planet is, but I know humans are unlikely ever to have any contact with it.
3 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
Lucky5 8/2/2019 6:43:20 PM (No. 141203)
All the Soros, Bezos and Google and FB gang should try to start a new world there.
3 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
konocti95 8/2/2019 6:56:39 PM (No. 141220)
Greetings to all you calculator cowboys out there. I enjoy crunching the numbers to better understand articles like this one. Yes, it's "just" 31 light years distant (181 trillion miles) but look at it this way...Mankind will arrive at GJ 357 sooner than Governor Moonbeam will arrive in Los Angeles on his high speed train.
9 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
droopydog 8/2/2019 6:58:18 PM (No. 141221)
Well, nobody is going to be traveling at the speed of light. 1/10th the speed of light (an absurd fantasy) would take 310 years.
0 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
konocti95 8/2/2019 7:07:09 PM (No. 141226)
If one could travel 1,000,000 mph it would only take 22,000 years to make the trip. You could do it in a Tesla Roadster but you would have to add another 7,035 years for charging.
5 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
czechlist 8/2/2019 7:11:24 PM (No. 141229)
Gravity?
Even if we could get there and it has atmosphere, water...
could humans function there?
0 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
DVC 8/2/2019 7:14:51 PM (No. 141233)
Unless wormhole travel or something equivalent to a "warp drive" (which warps space so that you APPEAR to be traveling very fast, are actually developed, it will be a colonizing effort only, or a probe.
Travel at 0.5 C for 62 years and time dialation effect adds 15% to that. So, it will be 71 years on earth before you arrive. This is at 0.5C average, so need to accel and decel, so probably need a 0.6C cruising speed. Then 31 years for a radio message to get back.
At least a century for any info back after you sent a probe, manned or unmanned.
If you travel at 0.8C, travel time drops to 38+ years, but time dilation is 2.29 factor, so Earth time will be 87 years, plus 31 for a radio message to get back, so actually LONGER for Earth to hear back, but better if
you have colonists on board. but they WILL need to be breeding their replacements and training them as they go.
3 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
davew 8/2/2019 7:15:14 PM (No. 141234)
The value of finding these potential candidates for extraterrestrial life is to narrow the areas that need to be searched with radio telescopes for intelligent signals. We should be able to receive non-random information carrying signals from other civilizations if they exist even if we never can travel to their plants. If we don't receive any signals with a wide spectrum search they probably aren't hosts to intelligent life.
2 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
Nevadadad46 8/2/2019 7:36:13 PM (No. 141258)
Wow! Just 31 light years away! Just think, if you traveled ten times faster than the fastest human object ever traveled (Helios II @ 41 mils per second)it would only take you 14,100 years to get there!
0 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
BigGeorgeTX 8/2/2019 7:41:35 PM (No. 141266)
We're talking about it taking nearly a decade to return to the moon, and they dream about going to a planet 31 LIGHT YEARS away. They have truly watched too much Star Trek and read too much science fiction. They're going to suckle that space exploration spending teat for all it's worth long after you and I are long gone.
1 person likes this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
Rumblehog 8/2/2019 9:27:06 PM (No. 141314)
Now to invent the Warp Drive... back to the workshop I go.
s/o
2 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
Safari Man 8/2/2019 11:00:18 PM (No. 141348)
I just sent them a text message. With any luck, I should have a response in 62 years, assuming the can understand my acronyms like “omg”. I hope my battery doesn’t die before then.
3 people like this.
Reply 22 - Posted by:
daveman55 8/3/2019 1:53:29 AM (No. 141398)
Engage!
2 people like this.
Reply 23 - Posted by:
Sunhan65 8/3/2019 7:28:29 AM (No. 141475)
Nice work, #16!
Skeptics always abound, but acceleration is the issue. Constant acceleration means speed piles up exponentially over time. You can actually go very fast in space because the normal factors that limit speed on Earth -- gravity, atmosphere, cops -- aren't present.
Pluto is unimaginably far away in normal human terms but a craft capable of 1G acceleration can get there in about a week. Robert Heinlein, the science fiction author, did the math on all this in an essay in his Expanded Universe collection of short stories. I recommend it to you for the essays, which reflect his patriotic libertarianism. The stories are good too.
1 person likes this.
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