Goldilocks planet

lixxus

lixxus

lixxus

Soldato
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Am I right in thinking the near earth like planet Gliese 581 g is the only exoplanet we have managed to find ?

It seems hard to believe considering how many stars we have up there, yet there seems to be more stars then planets.

Also considering Gliese 581 g is 20 light years away, do you think we may able to send a probe within the next 50 years?
 
lixxus said:
Am I right in thinking the near earth like planet Gliese 581 g is the only exoplanet we have managed to find ?
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No, you're not right. There were dozens the last time I looked. Probably hundreds now.

EDIT: 552, apparently. http://exoplanet.eu/catalog.php

It seems hard to believe considering how many stars we have up there, yet there seems to be more stars then planets.
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It's not that. The main issue is that it's a lot easier to detect a star trillions of miles away than it is to detect a planet trillions of miles away.

Also considering Gliese 581 g is 20 light years away, do you think we may able to send a probe within the next 50 years?
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No. Current technology is very far away indeed from being able to send a probe that far in that time, let alone a probe that could send back data from that far away and anything that could read it. What we could make now wouldn't be much faster than the Voyager probes and those would take hundreds of thousands of years to travel 20 LY.
 
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Pretty much as said.
Planets around other stars are detected by wobbles in the stars brightness. This is only possible if the planet has a fast orbit, and the plane of the solar system cuts across the stars path to us. It was thought that all solar systems spun the same way, all planets rotated the same way, and that the planes of rotation of the planets around their stars were also roughly aligned. Turns out that this is probably not true any more! New theories and obserations say that it just isn't quite true, and that we may actually not be a typical solar system. (See copernicus principle)
 
Shame there all so bloomin far away. I don't fear death but I do feel sad for all the space advancements I'll never see
 
We all like to ponder about the cosmos and what's out there.

It's a pity that the space race has ended because now we're all roughly working together the achievements have slowed somewhat.

So...if you could - would anybody here freeze themselves aka Futurama instead of getting embalmed or cremated?
 
Greenlizard0 said:
So...if you could - would anybody here freeze themselves aka Futurama instead of getting embalmed or cremated?
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No - I believe the spirit doesn't die with the body so I'll get to see all the advancement the human race makes - just maybe not from a physical human perspective.
 
lixxus said:
It seems hard to believe considering how many stars we have up there, yet there seems to be more stars then planets.?
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Not exactly true, NASA stated about free floating planets near the core of our galaxy, possibly more of them than stars iirc.
 
amigafan2003 said:
No - I believe the spirit doesn't die with the body so I'll get to see all the advancement the human race makes - just maybe not from a physical human perspective.
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This TBH


On a side note what would you think we'd be at now if we didn't stop going to the moon. I'd think we'd have a decent size moon base of a few dozen people and sending man missions to mars with a small base of a few people by now
 
Even if the current economic situation dictates that the "space race" has been put on hold indefinately, it wouldn't really make a difference when it comes to exosolar exploration. Until an FTL method is developed it is all irrelevant. Travelling even 1 light year by conventional means will still take more than a human lifetime. The reality is that we are still bound to our solar system at best, and I think that it will take a few more centuries of development to reach FTL travel. A human mission to Mars is the most we might see in our lifetime gents, and even that is looking shaky these days.
 
Watch a film called transcendent man. Computing power will explode exponentially over the next 30 years. Around the middle of the century computers will be so powerful they'll be able to work all this stuff out for us.
 
ScoTTyBEEE said:
Watch a film called transcendent man. Computing power will explode exponentially over the next 30 years. Around the middle of the century computers will be so powerful they'll be able to work all this stuff out for us.
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If we get around material issues that are currently limiting and slowing the progression of computer speed that is. Or if we get quantum computing to work on a larger scale.

The sky is QUITE large and we have barely even begun to analyse the entire thing so the fact that we have already found over 500 planets is actually quite impressive I would say.

What we need is advanced telescopes/instruments to measure the resources on a planet. I guarantee if we found one with a crap load of oil or other precious resources that's not too far away, we'd be there pretty quick (in space time terms so like 200 years).
 
Alex_6n2 said:
I guarantee if we found one with a crap load of oil or other precious resources that's not too far away, we'd be there pretty quick (in space time terms so like 200 years).
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Do you think oil will be that important in 200 years? I've often pondered technology like the synthesiser things from Star Trek, making almost anything by rearranging atoms etc. Doubt that sort of thing is even possible but at a different level, making hydrocarbons for example... Ramble over :)
 
I have wondered maybe it would be better to look more locally within our solar system to find a new element or source of power but this would require exploring on a much much larger scale then we currently are at the moment. If we found something that could give us much faster travel and wasnt on Earth I would think the space race would start instantly again. But wishful thinking I guess.
 
We ahve a source of power. The Sun. It offers more energy that we can ever need. However, getting it down to earth is the sticking point!
 
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