Scientists discover a nearly Earth-sized planet

GekiDan · Apr 21, 2009

Scientists, from England, discovered a 2 planets that are nearly the size of Earth. One of these planets is in the right size like that of Earth and the other is a perfect place to sustain life. The only problem now is, it is 20 1/2 lightyears away from Earth. Meaning one will need to travel 120,511,915,000,000 miles at light speed to reach that planet.

Full article here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090421/ap_on_sc/eu_britain_new_planet

Do you think we are one step closer in migrating Earth?

Delta · Apr 21, 2009

Perhaps we are one step closer from migrating from earth, but in the grand scheme of things, thats one step of probably hundreds of thousands of steps. We are no where near migrating to another perfect planet. What might happen first is migrating to a planet like Mars and adapting with technology.

deanhills · Apr 22, 2009

Delta said:
Perhaps we are one step closer from migrating from earth, but in the grand scheme of things, thats one step of probably hundreds of thousands of steps. We are no where near migrating to another perfect planet. What might happen first is migrating to a planet like Mars and adapting with technology.

Hopefully some of that 1.2-trillion can go towards expediting research in this area. Especially considering that earth is being eroded at a faster and faster rate pollution wise, people wise etc.

Delta · Apr 22, 2009

deanhills said:
Hopefully some of that 1.2-trillion can go towards expediting research in this area. Especially considering that earth is being eroded at a faster and faster rate pollution wise, people wise etc.

My problem with the whole "looking for a new planet to live on for the purpose of survival" is that we have everything we need right here on Earth. It's not Earth that's the problem, it's us. We find a new planet, and tear that one up to. It's largely the industrial revolution that's been the problem (200 years?) and look how much we've destroyed. It wouldn't take long to destroy the new planet.

People have to change, not the planet we live on.

deanhills · Apr 22, 2009

Delta said:
My problem with the whole "looking for a new planet to live on for the purpose of survival" is that we have everything we need right here on Earth. It's not Earth that's the problem, it's us. We find a new planet, and tear that one up to. It's largely the industrial revolution that's been the problem (200 years?) and look how much we've destroyed. It wouldn't take long to destroy the new planet.

People have to change, not the planet we live on.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. But this has been the case now for decades and it's getting much worse not better, even with the knowledge that we are destroying mother earth. For starters I think we need to get population figures down, as well as look better after the people that we have, not only from a physical point of view, but from a productive point of view, and yes, how does one do all of that when everyone is focussed on their own survival, greed, etc.

The Parakeet · Apr 22, 2009

We're a long way off from every even going there. It's mainly just a cool discovery showing that there are probably a lot of planets out there.

At the moment, a ship traveling at the speed of light would have to go for 20 years to get there. It would only be 20 years along their path though, it would be significantly longer everywhere else due to the confusing nature of special relativity.

We'll terraform Mars before we ever launch a mission. Mars wouldn't even be that hard of a project. We just need to create enough CO2 to make an atmosphere, and we're pretty good at doing that

.

GekiDan · Apr 22, 2009

The Parakeet said:
We'll terraform Mars before we ever launch a mission. Mars wouldn't even be that hard of a project. We just need to create enough CO2 to make an atmosphere, and we're pretty good at doing that .

I think the best way to do that is absord the excess CO2 on Earth and transport it to Mars. But it will be hard to do since I don't know if that kind of machine or technology is already available nowadays.

Delta · Apr 22, 2009

GekiDan said:
I think the best way to do that is absord the excess CO2 on Earth and transport it to Mars. But it will be hard to do since I don't know if that kind of machine or technology is already available nowadays.

Scientists are engineering ways to do something similar to this now. They are looking at basically sucking out CO2 from the atmosphere and pumping it into deserted underground oil reservoirs.

Another option they are looking at for here on Earth is to fuel the growth of phytoplankton in the ocean with iron... although they aren't sure if the process would create more CO2 than it would get rid of.

curious · Apr 23, 2009

It's really exciting that we found an earth-size planet, becaue everthing up to now has been planets the size of Jupiter or bigger. I think we are going to find that planets are common. Unfortunately, we have only left our planet a few times, then only to a fairly close moon. I imagine it will take hundreds of years just to get permanent colonies on Mars, and more than that to leave the solar system, if we ever do.

Well, you can't really travel at the speed of light (hence warp dirve in Star Trek) because you could never arrive. Time woudl stand still.

GekiDan · Apr 24, 2009

curious said:
Well, you can't really travel at the speed of light (hence warp dirve in Star Trek) because you could never arrive. Time woudl stand still.

Well, we can expect that to happen decades from now. Imagine traveling 20 lightyears at a speed of light. It means one can reach it 20 years after. So if you go there when you are 20 y/o, you can reach it when you are 40 y/o. I'm thinking where could we get our food suply if that would happen?

curious · Apr 24, 2009

It is going to take decades for us to get to Mars. I don't think interstellar travel is in the cards for a long, long time, if ever.

GekiDan · Apr 25, 2009

curious said:
It is going to take decades for us to get to Mars. I don't think interstellar travel is in the cards for a long, long time, if ever.

Well, it's going to take time to terraform Mars. we need more technology to do that. I have also read that the scientists would also like to terraform Venus. Has it been confirmed?

Delta · Apr 25, 2009

GekiDan said:
Well, it's going to take time to terraform Mars. we need more technology to do that. I have also read that the scientists would also like to terraform Venus. Has it been confirmed?

I highly doubt they are planning on terraforming Venus. The mean surface temp is about 462 ?C and I'm pretty sure it's surrounded in a layer of sulfuric acid. Mars on the other hand has a mean temp of about -43?C which would be much more workable. They have also found traces of water in the atmosphere of Mars, and perhaps ice caps at the poles.

I guess the ESA says that they will land a man on mars in 2037.

The Parakeet · Apr 25, 2009

It would honestly be impossible to even imagine terraforming Venus. Both of my astronomy professors actually referred to it as Hell.

It's ridiculously hot. This means that CO2 can't cool and form rocks through rain. This means that the gases continue to form a thick layer and maintain a ridiculous greenhouse gas effect. We would have to do a lot to actually fix it. Something along the line of hitting it with a bunch of comets to cool it off and create water...and chances are that we'll already have better options for colonies by the time we harness that technology.

GekiDan · Apr 25, 2009

Delta said:
I highly doubt they are planning on terraforming Venus. The mean surface temp is about 462 ?C and I'm pretty sure it's surrounded in a layer of sulfuric acid. Mars on the other hand has a mean temp of about -43?C which would be much more workable. They have also found traces of water in the atmosphere of Mars, and perhaps ice caps at the poles.

I guess the ESA says that they will land a man on mars in 2037.

I thoughts so too... Venus is also called the Greenhouse Planet. Someday, in the far future, the same scenario will also happen to Earth if climate change and global warming will continue and haven't prevented.

I really hope I'm still alive when a man takes his first step on Mars.

deanhills · Apr 26, 2009

GekiDan said:
I really hope I'm still alive when a man takes his first step on Mars.

Me too. I'm getting a little bored with the moon, Mars sounds much more interesting and intriguing. The new planet they discovered sounds just as interesting. Wish they could move away from oil as an energy source, as I am sure when they do, that they would discover modes of transportation that would take much less than 20 years to get there.

GekiDan · Apr 26, 2009

deanhills said:
Me too. I'm getting a little bored with the moon, Mars sounds much more interesting and intriguing. The new planet they discovered sounds just as interesting. Wish they could move away from oil as an energy source, as I am sure when they do, that they would discover modes of transportation that would take much less than 20 years to get there.

I really hope I can live until that happens. A space vortex is needed to decrease space distances between planets, like we have seen in Star Wars, Star Trek, Cowboy Bebop and lots of futuristic shows.
Is it possible if carbon dioxide can be used as an energy source like oil?

Delta · Apr 27, 2009

GekiDan said:
Is it possible if carbon dioxide can be used as an energy source like oil?

Carbon dioxide can't be used directly as a fuel, however carbon monoxide can be.

Here's a link to what some scientists are looking at doing: http://www.scientificblogging.com/news/turning_carbon_dioxide_into_fuel_using_solar_power

Basically, they want to take carbon dioxide, and use energy from the sun to split it into carbon monoxide. Really need looking stuff.

Glee · Apr 27, 2009

Where's Zefram Cochrane when we need him?

GekiDan · Apr 27, 2009

Delta said:
Carbon dioxide can't be used directly as a fuel, however carbon monoxide can be.

Here's a link to what some scientists are looking at doing: http://www.scientificblogging.com/news/turning_carbon_dioxide_into_fuel_using_solar_power

Basically, they want to take carbon dioxide, and use energy from the sun to split it into carbon monoxide. Really need looking stuff.

That's good news. I really hope that it will become successful so that they can absorb excess CO2 and CO in the atmosphere and can be used to make other kinds of energy.

Scientists discover a nearly Earth-sized planet

Similar threads