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Posted on 10/19/2009 7:11:29 AM PDT by Dallas59
Edited on 10/19/2009 7:14:06 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
WASHINGTON – Astronomers have found 32 new planets outside our solar system, adding evidence to the theory that the universe has many places where life could develop.
Scientists using European Southern Observatory telescopes didn't find any planets quite the size of Earth or any that seemed habitable or even unusual. But their announcement increased the number of planets discovered outside the solar system to more than 400.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Excellent. Next step, find life.
Good luck with that.
Be tough to develope aviation technology under those
conditions but if you did, wow!
Also weightless conditions would play hell on their body
especially returning to weight.
Interesting though.
The planets we can 'see' at this time are the giants similar to Jupiter and Saturn, possibly even Neptune sized.
Finding the smaller planets, Earth/Mars/Venus sized is the next step.
The Obama administration immediately proposed a new-plant-tax.
The Darwinists are ever hopeful ...
Planetquest has a really great 3D interactive atlas now with the sun at the center showing the systems around us.
Well, that’s humble pie for me, since I had predicted almost none. Well, we are getting a better understanding of the process now, as happens any time you do real science — observations, observations, observations.
“Excellent. Next step, find life.
Good luck with that.”
I think the entire Kook to Kook program today was devoted to ETs and the Roswell incident.
It is now nice to know that they can now have some planets
to claim that ET comes from, hahaha.
I did not read just how many light years away they are.
When God created the world, He intended for man to enjoy His entire universe. By Genesis chapter 4, man had become quite advanced. By Genesis eleven, man had very advanced engineering skills-—sadly used to rebel against his Creator.
There is no reason man would not have been allowed to fill the universe at some point, and God created a universe full of habitable planets.
The “second heaven” (outer space) is, however, now corrupted by the wickedness of the angels which kept not their first estate. Man will not be permitted to inhabit other planets until after the universe is purged after the Reign of the Savior, Jesus Christ, from David’s Throne.
A NEW heaven and a NEW earth will be created wherein will dwell righteousness.
What scientists are being allowed to see by way of telescopes and modern sensing equipment is just to remind man that all could have been his, were it not for man thinking he is smarter than God.
One day, the Regenerated saints of God, those who have been made new creatures in Christ, Sons of God, will enjoy a NEW heaven and a NEW earth, along with its far-flung reaches that glorify the Creator.
Sorry, Mr. Scientist, without repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, through your telescopes you merely see your own loss, and your own condemnation.
Did you post this in religion or something? The small vulnerable God crowd is out in force this morning.
Next step is still to just find a planet in what is considered a “habitable” zone that isn’t a gas giant outside our solar system. Let alone find life.
The funny thing about all this is, even if we found a planet that we thought could sustain life, with current technologies, how do you even begin to prove it has life?
The closest star to ours is 4.4 Light Years away(41,800,000,000,000 km) , voyager 2 is travelling at about 3.3 AU per year 450,000,000 KM per year. That means at that rate of travel, its would take about 93,000 years for a spacecraft to reach Alpha Centauri, let alone land successfully and then let us know (4.4 years later after those 93,000 years) if it found anything.
Now obviously Voyager wasn’t built strictly for speed though it is the fastest spacecraft to date, so we could probably do better, but even a 10 fold increase in speed is still 9,300 years.
Actually the New Horizons craft is much faster than the Voyager craft but still falls far short of anything that could put Alpha Centauri within reach.
I think the search for life should be secondary to the search for speed. I think 1/32 the speed of light or even 1/16 is a reasonable goal for the next century.
New Horizons has a much faster launch velocity from earth, but its still not going to outpace Voyagers speed by the time it leaves the solar system, its flight path won’t slingshot it as much as the voyager craft were by planets on its way out of the system.
So, while New Horizon took the speed record for fastest craft escaping earths orbit, its not likely to take the interstellar speed crown and catch voyagers speed.
Whole new studies are being created with the discovery of planets outside our star system. What’s even more amazing is we haven’t found a “duplicate” of Earth. I believe Stephen Hawking suggested that Earth my be the only type of it’s kind in all the galaxy. Much like each human on Earth is an individual so are the planets. Similar...but different.
Good point. New Horizons isn’t doing multiple large planet flybys and pluto doesn’t have the gravity well to give much boost.
We really are in the horse and buggy days of space travel as long as we’re stuck with rockets.
32 planets outside our solar system found?
I still mourn the loss of one of our very own.
Poor little Pluto. He once was found but now is lost.
Drake Equation original estimate (1961) for the fraction of stars with planets was 0.50. That may turn out to be a reasonable estimate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation for more details.
Jack
Well, its not that we can’t go faster, its just that’s never been a stated objective. There are many theorhetical designs we have, that could reach close to light speed over time.. of course, then the question becomes.. how do you slow and stop the thing?
I remember years ago reading about an engine design for close to light speed, accelleration was achieved if I remember correctly by single molecule releases by the engine over time, this would over time get the space craft eventually to close to light speed, obviously this accelleration would happen over long periods of time, but it would get you there, and was plausible to launch with enough fuel to accomplish. Of course then the issue is, slowing it down in time and all the other stuff it would have to do automatically since no realistic control could be offered from earth with lag time of communication being measured in years.
Interstellar travel just hasn’t been a goal. In terms of interstellar travel, we aren’t even in the horse and buggy stage yet, more like the unsandled foot on an unpaved road.
You could use gravitaion from variois bodies to slow down, but it would be complicated.
Only 32? Not having much success, eh?
Get real. There are far more planets than that in the universe. There is no guarantee that there is intelligent life anywhere in the universe, no guarantee that there isn’t. If aliens are looking at Washington DC, they will be sure there is no intelligent life on earth either.
We really do live in a very narrow band of environmental requirements. Something as small as a couple percent more x-rays reaching a planet’s surface would render it uninhabitable for us. The same can be said about the balance of gasses in an atmosphere.
In reality, finding life would actually complicate things for us in the sense that it would likely render a planet useless to us even if we couldn’t live there ourselves.
Robert Forward’s “Saturn Rukh” lays out a pretty likely scenario of what would happen if we found even primitive life. In the book the crew goes to Saturn to test the viability of mining helium as a fuel source. They find that it’s viable but impossible due to the fact that there is primitive but intelligent life.
Lifeless rocks really are the most usefull things for us out there right now.
In Forward’s “Saturn Rukh” they used cables made of carbon fiber nanotubes fired into the moons to asist climbing into and out of Saturn’s gravity well.
Forward was a physisist so his science fiction got pretty technical and was well beyond my understanding with a lot of it.
Yes, but can you predict where those bodies are going to be?
You have an inbound traveling and near light speed, in interstellar space, its coming up on a solar system, with your goal of landing on the 3rd planet from that star, you have say 6 planets outside your goal, in various places of orbit around that star..etc etc etc. And perhaps even other bodies you don’t know about because your observations of the system are from light years away.
I am not saying the math couldn’t be done to figure out a way of doing it, but remember, this all has to happen automatically.
The fastest spaceship we’ve had to navigate to date hit a top speed of 3.3AU per year, or approx 500,000,000 KM per year, and that was around a solar system we know pretty well. Light speed is 220,000 KM PER SECOND!...
To give you an ideaof the speed differencials here, our fastest spacecraft to date that we have dealt with is moving at little more than 15KM/second.. a craft traveling at the speed of light is traveling at 14667 times that speed. And it took us slingshotting that craft around several gas giants to accomplish that great speed of 15KPS. To slow a craft from light speed to an orbital velocity of say an earth like planet 27 KPH or .0075 KM per Second.
So, we need to bleed off 220,000 KPS to .0075 KPS just to achieve orbit around an earth like planet if we are travelling near the speed of light. Now, could we get there by repeated flybys of palnets using gravitational wells to slow down etc, certainly.. but you’ll been orbiting that destination sun a LONG LONG time, assuming you don’t collide into anything unexpected in the process to bleed off all that speed.
I am not saying it isn’t theorhetically possible, I’m saying its a very very difficult problem. When you have knowns like our own solar system, its difficult enough, to say, go do this all on your own without help.. its a wholey different story.
Lets just conjecture that we have a HUGE gas giant we can use the gravity of in our destination to slow down, and lets say we can bleed off 10KPS every time we pass it, and lets say we can pass it an average of once a year, that’s still a 22 year slow down wait once the vehicle gets there.
Its as if God has placed very deliberate speedbumps along our path to the stars. None of them are impossible in the long run but it’s pretty clear that we need to become comfortable with living and travelling within our own solar system for the next few centuries.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be interested in the rest of the universe, in fact the thirst for knowledge should drive us onward.
Bring back Pluto! No more wanna-bes till Pluto is reinstated.
Towards Other Earths: 32 New Exoplanets Found
Science Daily | 10/19/2009 | staff
Posted on 10/19/2009 11:08:33 AM PDT by xcamel
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2365894/posts
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Stand outside at night(if there are no street lights it works better)look up at the stars. Every star you see, with a few exceptions, is a sun, every sun has planets orbiting around it. The odds that there isn’t another intelligent life form out there some where is astronomical. Anyone who thinks we are the only intelligent life in the Universe is just beyond stupid.
This is good news. How many are terrstial planets?
That explains the StarGate
They did find one with 2 worlds in the “habitable” zone but neither would be suitable. One was on the inner edge and one was on the outer edge.
That is a good book. Take out the sex and make it a big screen animated film.
Yes....we are....it would be cool.
but not to prove anything..as we already have proven it.
Its reached the top of my bathroom reading list again so I’ve been rereading it a few pages at a time.
Forward had a firm grasp of the physics involved and a firm grasp of the social issues involved.
What does this have to do with Darwin??? Do you hate Science???
actually if they dig deep enough temperatures would be habitable in most of those places what they really need is water and a reason to be there.
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