Earth-like Planet Found

[McG]

Originally Posted by 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

we should use the "copy *.* " command. sure...its DOS based...but it worked well back in the day.

and if a computer virus from an apple computer can take down a mother ship in Independence Day...well then this should work too.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by McG

we should use the "copy *.* " command. sure...its DOS based...but it worked well back in the day.

and if a computer virus from an apple computer can take down a mother ship in Independence Day...well then this should work too.

Sorry, I'm waiting for the original Galactica from the 70s to arrive (well then again, I guess they arrived in 1980 and found earth too cheesy to stick around.). They probably ran everything on Fortran or something.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by ernie

First you must recalibrate.

Recalibrate what? The Warp coils? Dilithium intermix ratio? Plasma conduits? The annoying kid who's driving your ship?

That said, Star Trek makes the most sense. Generate a bubble around the ship that shifts it into another dimension (warping space). Therefore you can go faster than the universal speed limit (speed of light) because you aren't actually in the universe as far as spatial relativity. It's all about cheating. Otherwise, no there's really no way we can do it.

It's really such a shame that the human race was never built to last long enough to experience the universe as individuals. There's supposed to be 400 billion stars in our own galaxy and then our galaxy is also only one of billions. It's mind blowing and also depressing that we'll all die and never experience even an infitisimal fraction of it.

[photon]

I won the nerd of the week award at work for knowing what this was:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenberg_compensator

[McG]

Originally Posted by photon

I won the nerd of the week award at work for knowing what this was:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenberg_compensator

of course! that's a heisenberg compensator! everyone knows that don't they!

i'm just going to crawl back into the jeffries tube to get some work done!

[BlAcKNoVa]

Awesome. I finally got around to reading my October 2006 version of Astronomy magazine (it was filled with articles about exoplanets) this week and I read this news.

It could have life, but who knows. Dwarf stars tend to flare up a lot, so if this planet doesn't have a thick atmosphere and a nice magnetic field, bye bye life. If it's tidally locked, you're going to have one side hot, the other side coooold.

I can't wait for these new planet finding telescopes to be built.

[I_H8_Crawford]

Originally Posted by Cube Inmate

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!

Just curious - I am not a physicist but what if scientists figure out how to create and control anti-matter?

Would that adjust the numbers of the energy needed to consume for such a trip??


Also, on another note, wouldn't the most feasible way for humans to travel be something along the lines of the movie Event Horizon - where they essentially create a mini-black hole that folds space-time, and then just rip a hole through it and unfold it again?? Is that worm-hole technology, or is worm-hole travel limited to the theoretical worm holes that are out there in space already and we just have to find them?

[photon]

Originally Posted by I_H8_Crawford

Just curious - I am not a physicist but what if scientists figure out how to create and control anti-matter?

Would that adjust the numbers of the energy needed to consume for such a trip??


Also, on another note, wouldn't the most feasible way for humans to travel be something along the lines of the movie Event Horizon - where they essentially create a mini-black hole that folds space-time, and then just rip a hole through it and unfold it again?? Is that worm-hole technology, or is worm-hole travel limited to the theoretical worm holes that are out there in space already and we just have to find them?

Well we can already create and control anti-matter, just not in very significant quantities.

But the amount of energy required for the trip wouldn't change, it's just a super dense and effecient method of storage of that energy is required (so that the ship doesn't have to be the size of a moon). Anti-matter would be good if we could contain it. But to create it we would need that amount of energy (minimum, assuming no losses) in the first place. So we'd need to build something that would harness a significant portion of the sun's energy for a few years (EDIT: think a solar cell the size of the earth, or a Niven ring, or a Dyson sphere), create and store the antimatter, and then fuel up the ship and rock!

For the wormhole space warping thing, there's lots of theory about that kind of stuff but very little real knowledge. Yet.

[CaptainCrunch]

I think we're theorizing on interplanetary travel wrong. We need to create an engine that moves the universe around the ship, instead of the ship around the universe.

I think I have a diagram here somewhere

Oh yeah, here it is

[ken0042]

Originally Posted by I_H8_Crawford

Also, on another note, wouldn't the most feasible way for humans to travel be something along the lines of the movie Event Horizon - where they essentially create a mini-black hole that folds space-time, and then just rip a hole through it and unfold it again?? Is that worm-hole technology, or is worm-hole travel limited to the theoretical worm holes that are out there in space already and we just have to find them?

My understanding is they are two seperate things. I haven't explored space folding much, but I believe it is closer to Star Trek's warp drive. With Warp drive the ship is distorted to go from 100 meters long to several kilometres. At that point it can travel at a relative speed of 0.5c, but due to the distortion it actually is travelling at several times the speed of light from point A to point B.

With a wormhole, think of a 2 dimensional person living on a planet. He knows he can walk a certain distance to get to a certain point. One day he falls into a wormhole and comes out at his destination, but he traveled a much shorter distance. Because he is two dimendional he cannot comprehend how three dimensional space and physics works. In that same way, we cannot fully comprehend how 4 or 5 dimensional space and physics works.

[Burninator]

This sort of relates. Here is a very brief summary of Einsteins theory of time travel through space. I found it interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7vpw4AH8QQ

[troutman]

Another interesting discovery:

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

An odd planet the size of Neptune, made mostly of hot, solid water, has been discovered not far from Earth and offers evidence that other planets may be covered with oceans, European astronomers reported Wednesday.

Called GJ 436b, the planet orbits quickly around a cool, red star just 30 light-years away, the team at the Geneva Observatory said.

[Barnes]

Solid water at 250 degC. Crazy!!! Never knew that was possible. What would it look like? Could you skate on it?

Water is the most amazing substance.