NASA’s Kepler planet-finding project has hit pay dirt, and planet Kepler-22b looks like it would probably a great place to vacation.
NASA has found a new planet outside Earth’s solar system that is eerily similar to Earth in important aspects.
Scientists say the temperature on the surface of the planet is about a comfy 72 degrees (22 Celsius). Its star could almost be a twin of Earth’s sun. It probably has water and land.
It was found in the middle of the habitable zone, making it the best potential target for life.
The discovery announced Monday was made by NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting telescope. This is the first time Kepler confirmed a planet outside Earth’s solar system in the not-too-hot, not-too-cold habitable zone. This is the region around a star where liquid water, a requirement for life on Earth, could persist. The planet is estimated to be 2.4 times the size of Earth, which would make it the smallest found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star like our sun.
Twice before astronomers have announced planets found in that zone, but neither was as promising. One was disputed; the other is on the hot edge of the zone.
I’m sure if we behave ourselves, the GOP may let NASA exist long enough so that we can build a really big slingshot to lob a rock with a digital camera strapped to it at Kepler-22b. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to end Social Security and breathing in order to do it…unless we can convince the job creators that the planet’s rich in Unobtanium.
The six-legged tigers and giant blue cat people may object, however. Or the legion of dormant, life-hating robots. Or the weeping angel statues everywhere. Or the parasites with god complexes and an interstellar empire. Or the deadly plants. Or the viruses. Or…well, there’s got to be a catch, dammit.
There’s always a catch.
BGinCHI
NASA would only invent something this good if the funding was really, really threatened.
If the GOP wins the next election, I’m guessing NASA employees in Klingon suits will be invading FL (it’s close and they have a good chance of not being recognized as being in costume).
khead
I, for one, welcome our new giant blue cat people overlords.
Dave
Nice Stargate ref in the title.
Soonergrunt
What if the catch is that there’s nothing interesting there? At 2.4 times earth mass, it’s not habitable by humans anyway, so the only interest it might hold is whatever is already there, but what if there’s simply nothing of interest there?
carpeduum
Thanks for your lame attempt at humor illustrating nothing but more proof of the problems with US public education.
It’s 600 light years away. So while the discovery is mildy interesting, there will be no further discoveries related to this. They will find many more of these Pandora type planets like in Avatar but it really doesn’t matter in a Jodi Foster “Contact” sort of way.
Or maybe you believe in Star Trek warp drive and worm holes than can actually allow a human to cheat basic physics laws without every atom of your body being ripped apart if it even was possible.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
,.. randy giant space squid who are looking for a (cough) close encounter of the third kind and were the planet with the Japanese school girls.
Dave
The other catch: Kepler-22 is 600 light years away.
The Populist
Fact: If we were to fund massive research and build a ship capable of getting to this place asap, the GOP will just shut it down since it’s not a REAL guarantee that anything is living on that planet.
I think if we did find humanoid life on one of these planets, it could cause a change in how people believe (or not) in man’s religion.
Warren Terra
@Soonergrunt: Is it 2.4 times earth mass, or 2.4 times earth diameter (and so rather more massive still)? What is the gravity like?
ETA: if it is much bigger than Earth, but in the habitable zone, might it have habitable moons of reasonable gravity? Although the 600 light-years thing is kind of the killer, anyway …
ETA2: Has anyone done a continuous-culture experiment in a big centrifuge, say to achieve two or three g’s for a couple of years? Maybe with some organism that normally builds structures (fungus, for example)?
BGinCHI
@carpeduum:
You mean it doesn’t matter in a “bored for 2+ hours” sort of way?
Did you learn that in private school?
Hungry Joe
It’s such a shame that the damned speed-of-light barrier maroons us here forever. To paraphrase Dom DeLuise (in “The Twelve Chairs”), “Physics is so strict.“
Judas Escargot
@Warren Terra:
It’s 2.4x earth radius. They can’t determine its mass (and therefore density, and therefore surface gravity) until they know more about its orbit.
daveNYC
@Warren Terra: Looking at the picture, I’d guess it’s diameter, but that’s just me. Double the mass, that might be doable. Double the diameter, no way in hell (unless it’s made out of balsa wood). Freaking cube of the radius and all that.
Poopyman
@Soonergrunt: No, Kepler-22b is 2.4 times the diameter of earth, as calculated from the light curve of its transit of its star. Since the mass is unknown we have no way of knowing what the gravity is like at the surface.
Anyway, it’s 600 LY away, so until somebody invents warp drive we’re stuck here.
(ETA: I see people type much faster than do I.)
Calming Influence
To the wormholes, bitches!
JGabriel
It’s 600 light years away. Even if we could slingshot something there at 90% of the speed of light, it would well over a millenia for any pictures or data to get back to us.
Hell, the pictures we’re getting now are 600 years old. If there’s intelligent life there, they may have already blown themselves to pieces.
That said, it’s still pretty cool.
.
Villago Delenda Est
Probably settled by Klingons, Daleks, or Cylons already.
Or, worse yet…teatards.
Marty
This must be the alternative world that Tom Tomorrow is always writing about.
Gin & Tonic
@Soonergrunt:
Then we call it “Cleveland.”
Martin
@Soonergrunt:
Sure it is. What do you think the last century in American culture has been about? Proving that if you increase the mass of a population to 2.4x normal levels, they’ll still be mostly functional. When we finally do colonize
LV-426Kepler-22b all we need to do is bring along WOW, a lot of those KFC Double Down chicken sandwiches, and some HoverRounds and we’re golden. You think those skinny-ass Ukranians could do that? We’re inbred for excellence!Special One
If there was maybe championship of science journalism, I think CBS News would finish last.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/12/05/kepler-confirms-first-planet-found-in-the-habitable-zone-of-a-sun-like-star/
Phil Plait is fantastic.
Be champions!
MBunge
I just saw some TV show a few weeks ago that said there are no known physical laws that explain why Earth formed in the habitable zone around the Sun. The more of these things we find, the more we’ll have to re-examine that.
Mike
FlipYrWhig
@JGabriel:
Guess Kepler-22b, in spite of everything, kept electing Republicans. ETA: For the reasons why, see “What’s the Matter with Kepler-22b?”
Rosalita
The GOP will finance NASA if they see big development opportunities on the new planet.
Martin
@daveNYC: Double the diameter is even better – moves us farther away from the heavy stuff. Shit, those astrodudes in orbit weigh nothing! On Kepler-22b, you’d be, like, negative mass or something.
/Republican scientist
Judas Escargot
@Warren Terra:
One of the (many) unsung benefits of ISS is that we’ve learned that long-term zero-g just isn’t an option for meatbags like us. If we ever bother to leave earth orbit for any length of time, there will have to be a solution.
There are feasible designs on the drawing board for rotating sections on future spacecraft (inflatable habs are the future). This is a design that could be built today (ie no new tech needed), but obviously there’s no budget to build anything like this for awhile.
Less unlikely, there’s been talk of attaching a rotating inflatable section on the currently existing ISS (scroll down in the article above) to perform engineering/feasibility tests.
carpeduum
There is only 1 line in “Contact” worthwhile in educating the ignorant uneducated masses.
1) they’re so far away you’ll never contact them, or 2) there’s nothing out there but noble gasses and carbon compounds”
Personally I think #1 is absolutely certain. I have no doubt there is life out there, I am pretty sure there is intelligent life out there, I have no doubt that they are so far away we will never be able to contact them or visa versa.
There is maybe a 1 in 1000 chance an organization like Seti may someday pick up a transmission but it probably will have been travelling for many centuries. But really the odds of intelligent creatures able to produce radio waves at some time long long ago and for us to be looking in the right place at the right time to see it and it hitting us in the very very very narrow needle in a haystack time in our history when we are actually listening. It’s probably 1 in 1million at best.
Knockabout
Jesus.
More stupid pop culture references to cover up your staggering ignorance of basic facts. Are we sure you’re not really O’Keefe doing a major deep cover sting operation on lefty blogs?
I mean, you sock-puppeted your own blog for months before you got busted by a co-worker…oh and you got fired from your job for blogging at work.
Did you know that before you asked him to join, Cole? Or ABL? Ask him about it. Watch him deny it.
Then we go to the next step, I’m afraid.
Suffern ACE
@Soonergrunt: Nope. We could handle 2.4X earth’s mass. We might be sluggish and tired, but 2.4X is nothing, since the distance of the radius from the center of the planet would increase as mass of that planet increases, if it had the same composition as earth. Even if a lot of things were equal, and the planet had 2.4X the mass packed into an earth sized object, a 150 pound man would weigh 360. Totally manageable, athough I would pack light if I were walking anywhere.
Martin
@MBunge:
Other than the physical law that in order to report that the Earth formed in the habitable zone around the Sun, it’d have to, you know, be habitable.
Fucking causation, how does it work!?
Rome Again
F that! Just put all the Republicans on spaceships and send them there pronto and don’t forget to program the ships’ self-destruct mode for implosing after landing so they can’t come back! Tell them it’s their own private Idaho, no illegal aliens, no government subsidies, no regulations (and No Obama!). I’m sure they’ll be rioting to get the next ticket.
Judas Escargot
@Villago Delenda Est:
If the GOP leadership are Ferengi, then the Teatard rank & file would have to be Pakleds.
Hunter Gathers
If my TARDIS wasn’t on the fritz, I’d check it out. For all we know, it’s inhabited by giant, intelligent grilled cheese sandwiches. Or it could be run by pan-dimensional beings trying to discover the best way destroy the night sky. All of it.
JGabriel
Soonergrunt:
Wouldn’t the surface gravity depend on how far the surface was from the center? I don’t know the equation for determining the surface gravity of a planet (any physicists or astronomers out there who can tell us?), but while I think that the gravity on Kepler 22b would be higher than the gravity on earth’s surface, it might not necessarily be 2.4 times higher. It might even be within the habitable range for us, say less than 1.5 times higher.
.
Jay in Oregon
@Rome Again:
We’re warming up the B Ark for them right now…
ericblair
@Judas Escargot:
I’m guessing we wouldn’t see people actually moving around in any of these spacecraft, at least for the first generations: you’d either be in some sort of suspended animation, or only brains or downloaded personalities. We’d have to really justify having ambulatory meatbags in interplanetary/interstellar tin cans.
If we go that direction. Star Trek world or Matrix world? Or post-apocalyptic crapsack world? I’ve been busy training on the latter, and will be pretty good at kicking deathclaw ass when the time comes.
Knockabout
Yep, Zandar was fired for “Gross abuse and multiple violations of company IT policy.” Why that would make it very embarrassing for him if his new employer found out about that, I believe.
What do you think, Zandar?
Warren Terra
@Judas Escargot:
I disagree: there are few or no benefits to the ISS, and that’s certainly not one of them, on account of that we knew that long before the ISS was built, from previous manned-spaceflight efforts. While unmanned spaceflight goes from strength to strength, despite being perpetually underfunded and regularly cannibalized for funds to support manned spaceflight, manned spaceflight hasn’t achieved anything other than photo-ops, martyrs, and a little data on zero-g physiology for about forty years now. Not that long ago the nitwits at NASA were bragging that the Tinned Monkey Project had managed to operate cameras in orbit, as if that really required direct human presence. And don’t get me started about the inanities of Meat To Mars …
Rome Again
@Jay in Oregon:
LMAO! Adams is a genius, eh?
Face
I just waved at the planet, but nobody waved back. No life there that I can see.
Mnemosyne
I’m waiting for Neil deGrasse Tyson to tell me what to think about this.
daveNYC
(G*M1*M2)/r^2.
M1 can be ignored, because that’s you. A very small number. M2 is the planet. That one counts. G is 6.67 x 10^-11. Another small number that is outdone by the very big number that is M2. r is the radius of the planet. Mass increases by the cube of the radius while gravitational force decreases by the square.
Warren Terra
@Knockabout:
That sounds like it was very trying for Zandar, and a problem for his then-employer … but while his allegedly skiving off to spend time with the likes of, well, us is perhaps not always a good thing, are we supposed to think it shows a lack of character? That it makes him a fundamentally dishonest person? Do you presume that was the whole story? And why do you have such a grudge against him, anyway?
schrodinger's cat
@JGabriel: To determine the gravity on the surface, you need to know the density or the volume of the planet.
Rome Again
@Martin:
Love it! We’re GO for selling this thing! :P
General Stuck
That’s not a planet. It’s the latest National Review Cruise. Three hour tour, storm, you know the rest.
Villago Delenda Est
@Knockabout:
Oh, look! Zandar’s shitstain stalker is back!
Knockabout
Because he’s a liar and a fraud.
Just like the people he so smugly rants against.
I understand he’s starting a new job next week. Gosh, I should give them a call…
WereBear (itouch)
Sure would!
Mr WereBear says tell the Born Agains it is their’s; encourage them to claim it! The Muslims might get there first!
I would donate to such a fund.
Yevgraf
Like it or not, we’re physically trapped on this spinning rock. There not enough chemical lift capacity to bring up meaningful amounts of mass for adequate water, foodstuffs or air for even close planetary missions; further, there’s no objective reason to go.
In 300 years (unless we’re living in mud huts and relearning metallurgy in the aftermath of the American Nuclear Civil War), we’ll probably be able to send quantum computers with downloaded human consciences out to the stars – maybe even as disembodied wave forms. We sure won’t, however, be sending up human bodies.
Warren Terra
@daveNYC:
So, unless I’ve fouled it up (which is really quite likely; haven’t had to contemplate physics seriously for about two decades), assuming the planet has a density equal to Earth (so its mass is the Earth’s mass, times the cube of the ratio of the radii), the force of gravity on the planet would be (2.4^3^/2.4^2^)*g = 2.4 g.
ETA hey lookitthat: the carat functions as a superscript tag
The Moar You Know
A 2.4G (assuming composition same as a typical inner planet) surface gravity is not going to have long-term healthful effects on your circulatory system.
Rome Again
@Knockabout:
Threats are not tolerated, knock it the fuck off! Whatever your reasoning for being pissed is, it sounds like your problem is so much bigger than his with this threatening crap. Not cool!
Martin
@JGabriel: Well, it’s a catch-22. If the gravity on the surface is much less than proportional to the radius, that means the planet’s density is lower, which means that it’s probably gaseous, which means that its no longer interesting. Since the speculation was on surface water, that suggests a density similar to Earths.
But that’s okay. A little dimensional analysis tells us that Mass α R^3^, and Gravitational Force is α Mass/R^2^, so gravitational force is indeed proportionate to radius. Assuming the planet has the same density as Earth (which isn’t a given due to the nature of planetary cores, and of what they are formed) and it has 2.4x the radius, it will indeed have 2.4x the gravitational force. Odds are if it’s solid and not entirely composed of iron or some shit (unlikely), it’ll be in the ballpark of 2.4x earth’s gravity.
Villago Delenda Est
@Warren Terra:
I suspect Zandar once beat the shit out of him with a toothpick.
Also, you’re assuming that Knockabout is not a dog, or a lying lecherous amphibian.
Andrew Beck
@Judas Escargot:
That’s not even a tough problem. Either you accelerate under a constant 1g on the first half and decelerate at 1g on the second half. Or you spin either all or part your ship to generate 1g. If memory serves me right at 1g you’ll hit the speed of light in 23 years. Accelerating at much more than 1g isn’t very good on the human body, so unless someone invents the warp drive or artificial gravity; that’s how travel through space is going to be.
Judas Escargot
@ericblair:
If anything sentient ever goes to another solar system, it won’t be anything that you or I would recognize as “human”. I was talking about the more mundane (but achievable) goal of paddling around the inner solar system. Just because we can.
Regrettably, the most likely human future for now seems to be “play on the internet and fling rhetorical poo at each other until the sun boils off the oceans.”
Thrilling future, that.
Knockabout
But my job’s done. The truth about him is now out on one of the biggest blog communities out there. He’s finished.
I figure I’d just return the favor for slacking off for 3 years and affecting my work environment.
Enjoy your new friends and their uncomfortable questions, Zandar.
General Stuck
1. Fold space
2. Tax cut
3. Where would you like to go?
Chyron HR
@Knockabout:
You might be more convincing if you weren’t constantly posting during business hours.
Soonergrunt
@Knockabout:
@Knockabout:
@Knockabout:
Did he kill your dog or something? Because this level of stalking is some seriously creepy shit.
@Knockabout: I don’t really see that happening here.
MBunge
@Martin: “Other than the physical law that in order to report that the Earth formed in the habitable zone around the Sun, it’d have to, you know, be habitable.
Fucking causation, how does it work!?”
You’re missing the point. The implication was that planets form where they do by random chance because we don’t know otherwise, but if you start finding a large percentage of planets in other solar systems occupying the same general area, that would seem to indicate a reason beyond random chance.
Mike
pragmatism
gotta build up to this. first, sharks with frickin laser beams to patrol our coasts and moat-borders. then we get all of the oil that jesus put in ANWR (we can find a sciency type person to postulate that there is just enough oil to get the proper number of people to kepler-22), then we create a way to determine who is “living-rapture worthy” to go to kepler-22. i’m picturing something like the sorting hat in harry potter but it has glenn beck’s voice and propensity to cry. universal manifest destiny bitches!
Rome Again
@WereBear (itouch):
So would I, religiously. LMAO!
Chris
Hmm.
Other may have freaked out about the unscientific silliness of Zandar. But personally, the Stargate reference makes you OK in my book. Keep ’em coming.
Marc
No, an anonymous claim from someone counts for less than nothing. Why should we accept the word of a coward with an apparent personal grudge?
Andrew Beck
@Yevgraf:
A space elevator (or even better a series of elevators) could get us quite a lot of meaningful mass into orbit. Once you have the ability to get mass into orbit easily things like nuclear rockets and solar sails actually make some sense (at least to travel around our solar system). I have no doubts that with in a few hundred years we will probably travelling around the inner planets at least (there are too many resources out there to pass up).
Leaving the solar system is much more problematic. I see the much more likely scenario similar to what goes on in The Songs of Distant Earth, where humans send out robotic seed pod ships. they simply are loaded with either embryo’s or the genetic information to create embryo’s. The robotic ships land on planets, hatch the people, raise them and let them go on their way.
Yevgraf
@Knockabout:
I call that a dick move, shitstain.
Cris (without an H)
1. The fact that we will never be able to travel to or even communicate with extrasolar planets does not in any way diminish the coolness of finding them.
2. What the fuck is Knockabout’s problem? matoko-chan-style blog-stalking is not only ugly, it’s distracting.
BGinCHI
@Marc:
Wait, I didn’t know this was a Mark Halperin thread.
Steve
I wonder if technology will ever permit us to figure out if there is life on these distant planets without actually figuring out a way to travel there. I suppose science figures everything out in time, but my little mind cannot even imagine how it will be accomplished.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
2.4 mass the earth, that means it’s one huge ocean (one theory has the earth like that before some mars size planet hit it and spat out the moon)
You know what a planet sized ocean means; Planet of Sharks with Fricking Laser Beams!
Cris (without an H)
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.
Soonergrunt
@Marc: As I said to the weirdo, and not got an answer from him–so I’ll pose it as the hypothetical uncomfortable question to Zandar–did you kill his dog or something, or is he just some perverted stalker type that wants you to cover him in grape jelly and beat on him with a wooden (NOT graphite) tennis racket and is pissed that you won’t do it?
Cause it sucks to have that problem.
daveNYC
@Knockabout:
I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven, I told Bill that if Sandra is going to listen to her headphones while she’s filing then I should be able to listen to the radio while I’m collating so I don’t see why I should have to turn down the radio because I enjoy listening at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven.
Chris
@Andrew Beck:
To what purpose, though? Why would we bother to spread our seed that way if they’re going to be so far away we can’t have contact with them?
Cris (without an H)
A non-violent, all-female population?
Villago Delenda Est
@Steve:
40 years ago, the Intertubes themselves were supposed to be impossible, according to the brain trust at Ma Bell.
Lord Kelvin, a bit more than a century back, said that all the major scientific advances that could be made had been made.
The idea of using a computer to play musical selections was, quite literally, science fiction 25 years ago.
Cris (without an H)
We’ll send them with copies of the Book of Mormon.
Judas Escargot
@Warren Terra:
ISS budget: somewhere between $2.5-3 billion.
Overall NASA science budget: $5.1 billion.
The recently launched Mars Probe: $2.5 Billion.
James Webb telescope: $529 million.
CCDev (commercial space): $406 million (Obama had asked for 850).
Expected fees paid to Russia to hitch rides to ISS next year: $450-600 million.
I get it, a lot of liberals hate manned space. But the “manned space starves unmanned space” meme needs to die: Space science gets plenty of money (and I support unmanned and manned space equally, and have done work in both domains).
Hunter Gathers
@daveNYC: And I said, I don’t care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I’m, I’m quitting, I’m going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they’ve moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn’t bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it’s not okay because if they take my stapler then I’ll set the building on fire…
Warren Terra
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I don’t think the laser beams would be very useful under water. They’re only really good at the interface, for the sharks to target things out of the water. No land, so not a lot that’s far out of the water (unless stable vegetative islands are possible?). I’m afraid it’s no frikking laser beams for the sharks.
Judas Escargot
@Knockabout:
Go away. Nobody cares.
Zandar
@Soonergrunt:
If it’s the same guy, then yeah, he’s mad he’s still stuck in the same dead-end job I was at. I got promoted over him and he’s never forgiven me for it.
Me, I’m making more money these days.
Haters gonna hate.
Andrew Beck
@Chris:
If you don’t you’re accepting that humanity will go extinct. No matter how hard we try, our sun is going to burn out eventually. If you want humanity to survive, it needs to be done. I don’t think there’s any doubt that it will get done. Eventually the cost of doing is going to be small enough so some group of people can fund it themselves. If they’re sending their genetic material out into space, they’re basically sending their own offspring to colonize the planets.
General Stuck
I hate blog stalkers with a passion. scumbags.
Catsy
@Knockabout:
Speaking only for myself, of course, but from where I’m sitting one of the following is accurate:
1) What you’ve written is untrue, and you are a lying sack of shit.
2) What you’ve written is true, and you are an unethical sack of shit who may have done something legally actionable by disclosing privileged HR information.
Either way, I’ve got a much bigger problem with you than I would with anything Zandar might have done at a previous job. You’ve done no damage to him and accomplished nothing other than humiliating yourself. Now go troll somewhere else.
WereBear (itouch)
Mr WereBear welcomes the fans of “Planet of the Fundamentalists” for all extreme creeds of destruction are welcome there!
Warren Terra
@Judas Escargot:
They’ve been better about unmanned space in the last five years or so, since they gave up on the shuttle program and then gave up the shuttle itself. But there absolutely have been unmanned programs killed so more money could be spent getting Tang out of the gravity well, and there absolutely hasn’t been useful work done by manned spaceflight since the Seventies.
Also, you’re mixing multi-year projects (first Mars mission in how many years?) with annual budgets. By your own numbers, every year the manned spaceflight program costs something like the cost of six or more James Webb Telescopes (first big space telescope in what, twenty years?). That’s a trade I’d leap to make.
You sneer at “liberals [that] hate manned space”. But I don’t hate manned spaceflight; I hate waste. If manned spaceflight were free, I’d love it (some argue that it is effectively free, or even better than free, on the grounds that the glamour of manned spaceflight wrests funds from Congress that otherwise would never be forthcoming, including funds for unmanned spaceflight). As a liberal, and using a fictional example, I don’t hate Scrooge McDuck, either; I just see better things all that money could be doing for society than to have him swimming in it. The problem is that I see our manned spaceflight program as being Onanism In Orbit: a bunch of folks getting nothing worthwhile done, at tremendous expense, and distracting attention from the true heroes that are exploring our universe from down here on the ground, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and at the observatories, etcetera.
Jay in Oregon
I hear Knockabout likes to tie up king cobras and hit them with badminton rackets until he gets his rocks off. Just ask him and watch the denials start coming.
(There, I’ve fed the troll his dose of attention. Now he can go back to regaling me with tales of pie.)
Gin & Tonic
@Knockabout:
Because somebody I don’t know talking smack about somebody I don’t know is such a rare thing on the Internet that I have to get all concerned.
Gin & Tonic
@Villago Delenda Est:
Um, no.
WereBear (itouch)
I must point out that we know people like Gingrich must come from a planet with a signature of 2.4 gravity amirite?
Mnemosyne
At least now we know for sure that Knockabout is a conservative — only a conservative would spend all of his time at work posting about how horrible someone else is for spending all of his time posting from work.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Andrew Beck: Mike Oldfield’s Album based on that book is absolutely sublime by the way.
joes527
@Andrew Beck:
This is an urge that some folks have that I don’t get at all. I care very deeply about what happens to particular humans, but humanity as a project? Not. At. All.
Why do folks feel this great urge to keep humanity going independent from the hope that actual living people to live out long and rewarding lives?
Calming Influence
@Knockabout:
Hopefully meaning you’ll shut the fuck up?
Litlebritdifrnt
@Andrew Beck: I love that this is one of the story arcs that goes through the New Dr. Who. That at some point humans figured out a way to leave a dying planet and colonize others. If I remember my timelines correctly they initially hitched a ride on the back of a space whale and from there spread out throughout the universe.
TooManyJens
@Knockabout:
Aww, they’re so cute when they’re all self-important! ::pinches the troll’s cheeks::
Origuy
@Gin & Tonic: I knew people who were working on computer music in the mid 70s, but it was impractical to haul a mainframe to the concert hall. It took the microprocessor to get something out of the lab.
Rihilism
@MBunge:
Not trying to get in the middle of an argument, but I believe that you are missing the point.
The implication isn’t that we assume planets form in the habitable zone by chance because we don’t know otherwise. The implication is that given the enormity of the universe, random chance is a sufficient explanation of why these planets form and no physical laws are required. If the number planets in habitable zones were to exceed the number we would expect, then a physical law might be required, but given the size of the universe and the small numbers of “ideal” planets that have been discovered, I believe we are long way off from needing a physical law explanation…
Lysana
Here I thought carpeduum was going to be the troll of the thread for assuming we think SF is real in our generation (granting that the devices we’re using to discuss the matter were science fiction 40 years ago). But Knockabout comes along. If one is judged by the quality of one’s enemies, Zandar is clearly a hoopy frood who knows where his towel is.
Cris (without an H)
Was it narrated by Kirk Cameron?
Rihilism
@Cris (without an H): I concur with your number 1.
As for number 2, I think number 2 is a good descriptor for what Knockedinthehead is peddling….
Calming Influence
@Knockabout:
[PSSSSSST!Daily Kos is even BIGGER! Zander posts there under the handle ‘Meteor Blades’!]
Zandar
I am Keyser Soze.
Cris (without an H)
@Zandar: spoiler alert dammit
Rihilism
@Cris (without an H): Now, now…
I believe (though I could be wrong) MBunge may have been watching what I thought was an excellent PBS series, “The Fabric of the Cosmos” with Brian Greene, but I believe he may have misinterpreted the part about no physical laws for the formation of planets in the habitable zone….
Calming Influence
@Knockabout:
I’m wondering now if the huge number of people who have been “finished” in this way by internet trolls might account for our currently high unemployment rate? ’cause them trolls do a shitload of ‘you’re finished!’ out there on the internets…
Less Popular Tim
@Zandar:
Mo’ money, mo’ problems?
Brachiator
@carpeduum:
Really starved for attention, aren’t you bubbie?
@Lysana: This one has been popping up in a number of threads, making sound and fury, signifying nothing.
RalfW
No. No. No. The GOP will secretly demand that NASA build a really big slingshot to lob a rock with a giant nuclear war head on it. Can’t have aliens existing. Doesn’t fit with their anti-science, God-made-the-earth-and-only-the-earth-for-all-life (and-maybe-its-even-really-flat) worldview.
Less Popular Tim
@Andrew Beck:
And…? I can subscribe to wanting all existing people to be as happy and healthy as possible for as long as possible. But why is it a moral or practical imperative that the human race exists indefinitely somewhere? It can’t. It is not a bummer to me that the human race will someday not exist.
Put it this way: If our Sun was going to explode and vaporize the Earth, and you could somehow get all existing Earthlings transported somewhere safe, that would be great. But I don’t see how it helps anything for those doomed Earthlings to know that maybe the spaceship they sent up has successfully spawned our DNA to parasitize and ruin another pretty planet somewhere out there.
Calming Influence
@Gin & Tonic:
This really shouldn’t have gotten lost in the shuffle; I was LOLing.
Arm The Homeless
@Knockabout: This twat-waffle sure does have a lot of faith in his own ability to stay clear of a supposed shit-storm. I mean, he seems to think that a single, motivated person with a little information (such as second-hand knowledge, or IPs)could wreak havoc on another person, and yet somehow sees himself as above the fray. I mean his own employer could be contacted, and notified of some sordid, not-quite-verifiable information.
I mean you’d have to be pretty stupid to believe you’re the only nitwit on the internet capable of satisfying a grudge. Don’t ya think twat-waffle?
Rihilism
Personally, I think we are in need of more rogues and scoundrels on this blog. Cole and Tunch’s attempts to out-zaftig one another can only carry you so far….
Less Popular Tim
@Gin & Tonic: VDE meant *entertaining* music…
Less Popular Tim
@joes527: You beat me to it, I said this downthread. It strikes me as the height of narcissism to think that we musn’t deprive the universe of Us. But then again, I don’t understand why people have kids, either. It seems like you have to have a pretty high opinion of yourself to think the world needs more You.
Maybe it’s a religious thing? Like we’re charged with propagating the “made in God’s image” thing going as long as possible? I don’t see how He could be mad. He should have set up something more stable for the energy source.
Marc
OK, I’m in the audience at the Kepler Science conference where these results are being announced. (Coffee break!) Results like this are important because we’re learning about how many planets there are, where they are, and how that depends on their mass and what they’re made of. When we first discovered Jupiter-mass planets around other stars we found that their properties were bizarre, with some incredibly close to their parent stars. We now understand this as evidence that the planets move from where they got made.
Now Kepler can discover much smaller planets with space missions like Kepler. We’re finding that there are a lot of smaller planets (which is not surprising), and just beginning to see where the rocky planets are. We need this to design the next generation of missions – ones that can take detailed images of close stars, or expand the Kepler method to much larger studies.
Basically, we’re detecting the planets by looking for eclipses where they pass between us and the star. It’s rare for things to line up perfectly, so you have to look at many stars. You use this method to determine how many stars have planets; it’s very common.
Then you develop the tools to see planets even if they don’t line up perfectly, and look at closer stars. You need the first step to figure out where the planets should be, and how bright they’re likely to be. It’s a very exciting time, and Kepler is capable of expanding our knowledge a lot if it were to continue to take data.
It may get turned off to save money even though the science is solid. It’s crazy-making.
fuzed
You missed the space herpes. (really- see Ice Pirates)
Southern Beale
Unfortunately, they said on the BBC that it will take 600 years to get there, and that’s traveling at the speed of light. But if we leave now ….
Warren Terra
@Calming Influence:
As long as we’re picking out good LOL comments, I enjoyed this one:
(From Cris (without an H))
Ruckus
@Less Popular Tim:
There does seem to be a biological need to reproduce in all living organisms. Intelligence allows us to see that we don’t all need to reproduce as much life as physically possible. Some of us see that clearer than others. Others may just like kids. (No not that way)
A downside is given our current economic/political situation not having kids to move in with when old and smelly(or parents for kids to move back in with)can be a problem.
0whole1
> The six-legged tigers and giant blue cat people may object, however.
Winds of Altair, Ben Bova. http://www.amazon.com/Winds-Altair-Ben-Bova/dp/0812532279
Except it was ape-things not cat people. Probably no cookie for me.
Rome Again
@RalfW:
And there was war in Heaven! :P
Mark S.
Geez, Doug’s getting a little creepy with his sock puppets.
J. A. Baker
@Judas Escargot:
You know, according to one of my STO fleetmates, Pakleds do have their uses. As armor, spare torpedoes, propulsion boosts…
Admiral_Komack
@BGinCHI:
Well, Halperin and Knockabout have one thing in common.
They’re both dicks.
HobbesAI
@Southern Beale: At light speed the trip would be pleasantly brief.
A Conservative Teacher
I am sure it is a paradise of the sort that liberals love right now- no people, no drilling, no life, no cars, no energy, nobody making free choices, no property, and every single thing on it equally poor, unfree, and with no rights- a liberal paradise.
I plan on getting to this planet and drilling for oil, because I’m evil and want to bring cheap energy to the masses of poor people here on Earth who are suffering. Try and stop me.
MBunge
@Rihilism: “The implication is that given the enormity of the universe, random chance is a sufficient explanation of why these planets form and no physical laws are required.”
Which may be true. But that was actually the thing about the show in question which sort of bugged me. It dealt with several odditites about which there were two possible explanations. One was, there’s something about the universe we don’t understand. The other was, reality (including alternate dimensions) is so vast that things which seem inexplicable are simply the result of statistically inevitability. That out of so many stars, so many planets and so many universes, the oddity in question is just one of those one in a trillion thigns which happens.
Again, that may be true. I am a bit dubious of scientific thinking that assumes it basically knows everything it needs to know and regards things that defy its understanding by retreating to the law of large numbers and dismissing the anomaly as statistical deviation.
Mike
MBunge
@Rihilism: “I believe (though I could be wrong) MBunge may have been watching what I thought was an excellent PBS series, “The Fabric of the Cosmos” with Brian Greene, but I believe he may have misinterpreted the part about no physical laws for the formation of planets in the habitable zone.”
That may have been it and I certainly may be mistnterpreting it, but I was struck by how the show almost admitted that these increasingly complex theories of alternate dimensions and parallel realities are spawned as alternatives to the much simpler idea that our understanding of physics is mistaken or at least incomplete.
Mike
Marc
@A Conservative Teacher:
If a planet has no life it will also have no oil. I hope that you don’t teach science.
Paul in KY
@Andrew Beck: The faster you go, the heavier you are. After awhile, that poses problems for propulsion systems.
Paul in KY
@Andrew Beck: Andrew, the sun will burn out in about 4 or so billion years. That makes it sorta academic.
Humanity will probably be heading for extinction much, much sooner than that.