Earth-like Planet Found

[Flames in 07]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Nah, you don't need the Esso card. There's no friction in space. Just fill'er up once, blast off and let the inertia take you there.

Heh, true, presuming you aim right to start with.

If you find any shutdown defencement that can PK bring them back.

[Flashpoint]

There are many copies.



And they have a plan.

[Sidney Crosby's Hat]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Well, if they somehow recieved our TV transmissions at the speed of radio, right now they'd be watching:

The Cosby Show
Family Ties
Cheers
Murder, She Wrote
The Golden Girls
60 Minutes
Night Court
Growing Pains
Moonlighting
Who's the Boss?

I see these aliens as more of the type that would watch Knight Rider or Miami Vice.

[Cube Inmate]

An article on the infeasibility of interstellar travel using our current knowledge of propulsion technologies:

http://www.calphysics.org/articles/merc2000a.html

Pretty depressing look at things, if you ask me. The only real hope for exoplanet "exploration" is development of better and better remote sensing techniques (e.g. telescopes & stuff).

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Krieger99

Current knowledge, no. But true knowledge comes in knowing you know nothing.

Obviously, it would be a waste to try and get there with conventional means of travel. You would need to make some type of shortcut, or "wormhole". However, it remains to be seen if that is possible.

I prefer Dirty Harry: A man's gotta know his limitations.

Hoping to find a wormhole (if they even exist) and that said wormhole leads where you want to go (if you can even survive the passage) is basically the realm of fantasy and not even worth considering as serious option.

[troutman]

Physicist Hawking experiences zero gravity

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/0....ap/index.html

Hawking has an ulterior motive for going on the flight other than the personal thrill of weightlessness -- he believes in the importance of private space ventures and the need to reduce the cost of space tourism so that it is accessible to more people.

"Many people have asked me why I am taking this flight. I am doing it for many reasons," he said before the flight. "First of all, I believe that life on Earth is at an ever increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space."

[worth]

Hoping to find a wormhole is probably a waste of time, but trying to figure out how one would work and trying to create one on demand it pretty much the only viable way to travel anywhere in the universe. If that is not possible, then we're stuck here.

Our galaxy is what...100,000 light years across...so even if we travel at the maximum speed physics allows in a vaccuum...we're still not getting anywhere. We can't even visit out closest neighbor andromeda.

[troutman]

It might require bodies being frozen in stasis, and being revived on arrival, or a multi-generational voyage.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by troutman

It might require bodies being frozen in stasis, and being revived on arrival, or a multi-generational voyage.

Me and 10 hot woman, we might not arrive at the destination, but the kids might, and it'll be a terrific voyage.

[worth]

by the time you get to where you're going, everyone will be gone.

that brings up another point in which the closer you travel to the speed of light, the more time slows down for the traveler. Thus years could pass on the place your going to while you only age minutes.

[Cube Inmate]

Originally Posted by worth

by the time you get to where you're going, everyone will be gone.

that brings up another point in which the closer you travel to the speed of light, the more time slows down for the traveler. Thus years could pass on the place your going to while you only age minutes.

Very true, although the years-to-minutes time dilation factor of, say, 100,000 (1 year approx 5 minutes) requires a velocity of about 0.9999999999 times the speed of light. Accelerating a 100 kg person (including his spacesuit) to that speed from rest should require on the order of 10^24 joules, or about 10 billion years worth of the entire world's energy usage. On the other hand, that's only about the equivalent of the sun's energy output for 3 milliseconds.*

*Questionable sources used, but...DAMN!

[ken0042]

I also recall seeing something that explained that even if we could get something that would take us up to 0.5c; disregarding the time distortion it would take a great distance to bring us up to that speed, and to bring us back down to make the G-force tolerable by humans.

I wonder if 500 years from now people will look at our ideas from the 20/21st century and compare us to Davinci; ie so far ahead of our time by with such great ideas, or more how we think of the people who tried to build flying machines in the 19th century.

It would also really suck if say 50 years from now we launched some sublight multi generational ship designed to get to this new planet in 200 years, and then 180 years later somebody on Earth develops warp drive and ends up passing the ship launched so much earlier.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by ken0042

I also recall seeing something that explained that even if we could get something that would take us up to 0.5c; disregarding the time distortion it would take a great distance to bring us up to that speed, and to bring us back down to make the G-force tolerable by humans.

I wonder if 500 years from now people will look at our ideas from the 20/21st century and compare us to Davinci; ie so far ahead of our time by with such great ideas, or more how we think of the people who tried to build flying machines in the 19th century.

It would also really suck if say 50 years from now we launched some sublight multi generational ship designed to get to this new planet in 200 years, and then 180 years later somebody on Earth develops warp drive and ends up passing the ship launched so much earlier.

Without signaling and flipping the old bird at the multigenerational ship.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by ken0042

It would also really suck if say 50 years from now we launched some sublight multi generational ship designed to get to this new planet in 200 years, and then 180 years later somebody on Earth develops warp drive and ends up passing the ship launched so much earlier.

There is a funny moment just like that in Pandora's Star by Peter Hamilton. Ther first man on Mars (by rocket ship) is shocked to turn around and see that two men that just developed worm hole technology are already there waiting.

[ernie]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Growing Pains

What would Kirk Cameron and his buddy Ray Comfort say about this?

[McG]

can't we just say "make it so"...and "engage"?

[ernie]

Originally Posted by McG

can't we just say "make it so"...and "engage"?

First you must recalibrate.

[McG]

Originally Posted by ernie

First you must recalibrate.

and we're definitely going to need one of those tachyon pulse generators.

and a transporter.

oh yah...and a holodeck for those 20 light years of travel!

[worth]

i need a holodeck for my room.

[Cowperson]

We should just hold off and sip mint julips while we wait for the Galatica to show up sometime next year . . . . . then copy their FTL drive.

Cowperson