Scientists are still pouring over data from the Kepler probe to look for Earth-like planets. One has been found orbiting a star nearly identical to ours except older and in an orbital period of 385 days. It's a big planet though, with a radius about 60% larger and a surface gravity about twice ours. It would suck to be an aerospace engineer on this planet because flight would be challenging.

Super Earth

(July 23, 2015 at 5:31 pm)AFTT47 Wrote: Scientists are still pouring over data from the Kepler probe to look for Earth-like planets. One has been found orbiting a star nearly identical to ours except older and in an orbital period of 385 days. It's a big planet though, with a radius about 60% larger and a surface gravity about twice ours. It would suck to be an aerospace engineer on this planet because flight would be challenging.

Super Earth

2Gs is probably adaptable. The article referenced a thicker atmosphere so I'd probably be more worried about surface pressure.

It says the star in that solar system is pretty old though. Could go boom before long tbh, especially considering it's bigger than our sun.

Gosh, and just 1400 light years away!

Let's see...assuming massive breakthroughs in space-transport technology, metallurgy, radiation shielding, propulsion, life support and in-transit food production, we could be there in ...umm... *scratches head*  ...erm... carry the two ...cosecant of the inverse Flobovik Constant...

Never.

Boru

(July 23, 2015 at 5:56 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Gosh, and just 1400 light years away!

I know, it's the way they always say it just 1000 light years away, as if anyone alive in the next 1000 years at least is going to live to see it.

Humanity will kill itself off before we ever get to that point.

(July 23, 2015 at 5:56 pm)Yeauxleaux Wrote: It says the star in that solar system is pretty old though. Could go boom before long tbh, especially considering it's bigger than our sun.

Stars like the sun don't go "boom" exactly. They gradually swell into a red giant, then collapse into a white dwarf. Any life on that planet has already had at least a billion more years to evolve than we've had. Who knows how that translates to life evolving in different conditions than we have here.

(July 23, 2015 at 6:32 pm)AFTT47 Wrote:

(July 23, 2015 at 5:56 pm)Yeauxleaux Wrote: It says the star in that solar system is pretty old though. Could go boom before long tbh, especially considering it's bigger than our sun.

Stars like the sun don't go "boom" exactly. They gradually swell into a red giant, then collapse into a white dwarf. Any life on that planet has already had at least a billion more years to evolve than we've had. Who knows how that translates to life evolving in different conditions than we have here.

That's just it though isn't it. Even though our sun will have much longer to live, life as we know it today won't survive one billion years from now, no surface water. Could a new form of life evolve to live in the new habitat? Who knows, but it would be unlike anything we've seen and we have yet to find life in similar environment elsewhere in the solar system.

Once our technology is sufficiently advanced we can freeze zygotes and ship them off with our ships. When they are within 20-30 years of the planet we defrost those suckers, incubate them with artificial wombs, and have humanoid robots take care of them and raise them. Educate them with holograms and whatnot. Imagination is the limit.

Still, we should give up on worrying about planets to colonize and build our own version of the death star. Without the death though. Maybe life star, Eh? No worries about traveling far distances, no weather patterns to worry about, no tectonic plates rumbling all over the place messing everything up, wayward meteors/comets zinging us, etc.

(July 23, 2015 at 5:56 pm)Yeauxleaux Wrote: Could go boom before long tbh, especially considering it's bigger than our sun.

Whatever before long means in terms of the Cosmos. And never forget we're always looking at a distant past when looking at the universe.

(July 23, 2015 at 6:05 pm)Yeauxleaux Wrote:

(July 23, 2015 at 5:56 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Gosh, and just 1400 light years away!

I know, it's the way they always say it just 1000 light years away, as if anyone alive in the next 1000 years at least is going to live to see it.

That depends entirely on what fraction of c one is traveling and what reference frame you're using.

Counterintuitively, travelling 1000ly at 0.99c won't take anywhere near 1000 years for the passengers.

....not that it's even possible today.