(September 29, 2010 at 10:02 pm)theVOID Wrote: Source:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19...-life.html
Of course, we can only really tell that it might be habitble by checking what colors it appears to be and using the light from its reflections to guage what the chemical compositions might be. Of course, even if we did find a very likely to be a dense (and therefore rocky) little blue dot is an amazing discovery.
Not quite as definitative as being able to say "that's an M-class planet" but it's the best shot we have.
Of course, the next best thing we can think to accomplish over the next fifty years is deciding just what, if anything, we can actually do about it. I think that would generally include plans for a robotic flyby from probe going near the speed of light for most of the journey and slowing down enough for a flyby or, better yet, establishing orbit and sending back pictures and scientific scans of the planet from orbit.
Such an undertaking is currently beyond our ability, but not by much. Still, a near-light flyby (that was capable of slowing down enough for a glance) would still take 40~50 years.
Still - a whole new world would definately make the effort worthwhile - even if the only resemblance to earth was oceans of liquid water.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
