Astronomers Find "Class M" Planet. Engage!
By: Lowell
Published On: 4/25/2007 1:50:46 PM
Well, it's not officially known as "Class M", but that's what a planet suitable for supporting humanoid life is called in Star Trek. And that's what astronomers appear to have found: "the existence of an Earth-like planet," with liquid water and "either rocky -- like our Earth -- or covered with oceans." Even better, it's really close in astronomical terms - only 20.5 light years (120 trillion miles) away! Hey, that's practically in our backyard. So, let's see, at 10,000 miles an hour, we'd get there in just 12 billion hours. Sure, that sounds like a lot, but really it's only 1,369,863 years. No problem!
Too long, you say? How about if we kick it up to 50,000 miles per hour, which I believe is the fastest spaceship we've ever built. Well, that would take only 273,973 years, just 3 times longer than anatomically modern humans have existed on earth. Hey, just think what we'll have evolved into by the time we get to the Gliese 581 star system...maybe even beyond "Republican" and "Democrat?" Ha. :)
Comments
Humans aren't evolving anymore, Lowell! (DanG - 4/25/2007 2:04:29 PM)
Read that this weekend in an artcile comparing humans and chimps. While chimps are still evolving, Humans have practically come to a complete stop. Why is this? Because we no longer change to match our environment. Instead, we change the environment to match us. Just a neat little fact I thought I'd share.
Just for fun, you should see (Lowell - 4/25/2007 2:16:48 PM)
the movie
Idiocracy. It addresses the hunan "evolution" question in amusing, satirial terms. Except in this case it's "devolution" towards dumber and dumber and dumber...until it reaches the level of Dumbya or even worse! Ha. :)
*Possibility* of liquid water (code - 4/25/2007 2:46:20 PM)
Gliese 581 *could possibly* have liquid water because it's inside the solar zone corresponding to 0-40 degrees celcius, which means water would be liquid. But nobody's actually seen any water on an extrasolar planet. If you know how to get that much resolution, let me know :)
Still, very exciting, but the thing could also be a charred piece of rock. Sorry to nitpick, but there's a huge distinction here.
Let's make the 273,973-year trip there (Lowell - 4/25/2007 2:48:07 PM)
and find out! :)
Warp Drive has been seriously discussed by some of our best !! (Used2Bneutral - 4/25/2007 5:25:22 PM)
There have been several articles in the journals and even the "Scientific American" magazine and others
http://www.physics.h... on variations of the them of "Folding" the Universe to create a propulsion system or alternative using relative main-line physics to travel at speeds well beyond the speed of light..... Even the likes of Stephen Hawking has done some work and been quoted in this area.
Travel to such long distance locations may become practical sooner than some may expect.
So, will we be exporting Fox News (Lowell - 4/25/2007 5:41:40 PM)
and Bush/Cheney to Alpha Cenauri pretty soon? Don't tell the aliens, they might attack us first! :)
That will require a bit more... (Matusleo - 4/26/2007 6:05:32 PM)
I've done a bit of research into this field, though I confess it has mostly been amateur. But the impression I was given was that unless we can ferret out how dark matter or dark energy works (the stuff that keeps galaxies together and the stuff that is causing the universe to expand respectively), we'll never be able to manipulate space itself.
Of course, I've also read the theory on wormholes, that they'd require an insane amount of energy just to remain stable, though from physics today, they are theoretically possible too.
Even if we will never in our lifetimes see travel to other solar systems, it is still exciting to think that we may have found another planet like our own.
Ut Prosim