Physics and astronomy thread (1 Viewer)

[Billy Bats]

Nasa is to host a major press conference on a "discovery beyond our solar system"

 

 

[joffer]

Nasa is to host a major press conference on a "discovery beyond our solar system"

 

7 earth-size exoplanets found around Trappist-1 star, about 40 light years away.  3 believed to be in the habitable zone.

 

[msommer]

7 earth-size exoplanets found around Trappist-1 star, about 40 light years away.  3 believed to be in the habitable zone.

Do they know anything about their beer?

Or are they keeping quiet on that?

 

[lod001]

Let's say we get there and the inhabitants are in the class of humans from lets say, the 1700's. How bad do we #### their #### up?

If they are more advanced they will instantly see that we are ####### morons.

 

[joffer]

Do they know anything about their beer?

Or are they keeping quiet on that?

I'll tweet that question.  Press conference still ongoing.

 

[joffer]

While the science is fascinating.  The scientists are boring as hell.

they should've gotten Neil DeGrasse Tyson to host.

 

[timschochet]

Let's say we get there and the inhabitants are in the class of humans from lets say, the 1700's. How bad do we #### their #### up?

If they are more advanced they will instantly see that we are ####### morons.

How long would it take us to get there? We can't even get to Mars at this point.

 

[IC FBGCav]

Help search for planet 9 and brown dwarfs:

https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/marckuchner/backyard-worlds-planet-9

 

[joffer]

How long would it take us to get there? We can't even get to Mars at this point.

sure we can.

 

[SacramentoBob]

How long would it take us to get there? We can't even get to Mars at this point.

About 800,000 years with our current technology.  About 400 years with those solar sail thingamajigs.

 

[SacramentoBob]

Just thinking about the distances you have to cross in space is mind bottling.

 

[IC FBGCav]

About 800,000 years with our current technology.  About 400 years with those solar sail thingamajigs.

How fast do they go?

 

[SacramentoBob]

How fast do they go?

1/10 the speed of light.

Proxima Centuari b is still the closest one since it's ONLY 4 light years away.

 

[Bobcat10]

Help search for planet 9 and brown dwarfs:

https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/marckuchner/backyard-worlds-planet-9

Saw this the other day.  I was taking it quite seriously and didn't want to mess up.  I assume hundreds of people see the same 4 images so if I miss something it should be picked up along the way.

 

[IC FBGCav]

Saw this the other day.  I was taking it quite seriously and didn't want to mess up.  I assume hundreds of people see the same 4 images so if I miss something it should be picked up along the way.

It is not an easy thing.   Sometimes I am not sure and mark them to safe, although I didn't mark many.   Also, there are many that don't have all four panels due to some kind of error.  Plus I am not sure I could pick out a fast moving one no matter how hard I tried.

 

[joffer]

Kudos to CNN for having this as the main story on their app.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

Of course all the habitable planets congregate around an ultra-cool dwarf star.  The shy, nerdy dwarf star just gets asteroids.

 

[ShamrockPride]

Just thinking about the distances you have to cross in space is mind bottling.

Yeah, and the 800,000 years it would take us to get to these on the cosmic scale is "right next door".

 

[Ramsay Hunt Experience]

Of course all the habitable planets congregate around an ultra-cool dwarf star.

The Dinklage star. 

 

[SacramentoBob]

Yeah, and the 800,000 years it would take us to get to these on the cosmic scale is "right next door".

The farthest galaxy from us is 13 billion light years away.  I can't even begin to comprehend this.

 

[St. Louis Bob]

7 earth-size exoplanets found around Trappist-1 star, about 40 light years away.  3 believed to be in the habitable zone.

This is awesome.

 

[Phil Elliott]

Do they know anything about their beer?

Or are they keeping quiet on that?

Strong indications the temp is just right.

 

[The Duff Man]

I wonder how different our world would be if there was another habitable planet in our solar system. 

 

[lod001]

I wonder how different our world would be if there was another habitable planet in our solar system. 

If I could get there first and warn them about the mutants on this marble, it would be bigly awesome.

 

[joffer]

The farthest galaxy from us is 13 billion light years away.  I can't even begin to comprehend this.

actually it's most likely much further.

 

[lod001]

Steven Hawking believes someday we will just zip thru wormholes.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1269288/STEPHEN-HAWKING-How-build-time-machine.html

 

[GregR]

Yeah, and the 800,000 years it would take us to get to these on the cosmic scale is "right next door".

The farthest galaxy from us is 13 billion light years away.  I can't even begin to comprehend this.

Let's help you get a sense of proportion. We'll start with a piece of fairy cake and extrapolate from there...

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

7 earth-size exoplanets found around Trappist-1 star, about 40 light years away.  3 believed to be in the habitable zone.

More here.

Three planets are in the habitable zone of the star, known as TRAPPIST-1e, f and g, and may even have oceans on the surface.

 

[Galileo]

7 around a dwarf star? And NASA couldn't come up with a better name than Trappist?

Name the 7 dwarf planets Sleepy, Sneezy, Happy, Grumpy, Bashful, Dopey, and Doc, and name the star Snow White. Boom. Now you've got a billion more dollars in funding.

No wonder we're getting our ### kicked in space by the likes of India.

Its other name is  2MASS J23062928-0502285, so maybe Trappist isn't so bad after all...

ETA...In case you are wondering, the name Trappist comes from a telescope used to observe and study the star - TRAPPIST: Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope

 

[Phil Elliott]

7 around a dwarf star? And NASA couldn't come up with a better name than Trappist?

Name the 7 dwarf planets Sleepy, Sneezy, Happy, Grumpy, Bashful, Dopey, and Doc, and name the star Snow White. Boom. Now you've got a billion more dollars in funding.

No wonder we're getting our ### kicked in space by the likes of India.

The billion dollars will go to Disney India to develop a virtual reality ride. 40 light years is a long time to wait for an ROI.

 

[GregR]

Let's say we get there and the inhabitants are in the class of humans from lets say, the 1700's. How bad do we #### their #### up?

If they are more advanced they will instantly see that we are ####### morons.

Well, right now they are getting 1978 television signals arriving there. So they are probably watching Battlestar Galactica.

 

[SacramentoBob]

The Google doodle for this discovery is cute.

http://i.imgur.com/7YKo3w3.gifv

 

[SacramentoBob]

Who thinks we're the most advanced life form in the Milky Way?

 

[BigSteelThrill]

Rebar graphene

I kid you not, look it up

Graphene is the strongest material ever tested, with an intrinsic tensile strength of 130 GPa and a Young's modulus (stiffness) of 1 TPa (150000000 psi).

The Nobel announcement illustrated this by saying that a 1 square meter graphene hammock would support a 4 kg cat but would weigh only as much as one of the cat's whiskers, at 0.77 mg (about 0.001% of the weight of 1 m2 of paper).

 

[Galileo]

Who thinks we're the most advanced life form in the Milky Way?

Well, if life elsewhere evolved like life here, there is a good chance we are the most advanced.  Those that would have been more "advanced" would have surely destroyed themselves by now.

 

[matttyl]

Graphene is the strongest material ever tested, with an intrinsic tensile strength of 130 GPa and a Young's modulus (stiffness) of 1 TPa (150000000 psi).

The Nobel announcement illustrated this by saying that a 1 square meter graphene hammock would support a 4 kg cat but would weigh only as much as one of the cat's whiskers, at 0.77 mg (about 0.001% of the weight of 1 m2 of paper).

Man, if I could just get a mountain bike made from this stuff!

 

[Buttonhook]

Who thinks we're the most advanced life form in the Milky Way?

For the sake of the rest of the universe, I sure hope not.

 

[Buttonhook]

Well, if life elsewhere evolved like life here, there is a good chance we are the most advanced.  Those that would have been more "advanced" would have surely destroyed themselves by now.

Interesting point.  But as a percentage of population, I believe we have become less violent (and destructive) as a society as we've advanced.  However, our ability to destroy the entire human population in the blink of an eye has never been easier.

 

[badmojo1006]

This news makes me really 

 

[lod001]

Who thinks we're the most advanced life form in the Milky Way?

Not a chance. We are like an amoeba that rides the short bus to some civilizations.

 

[lod001]

Well, if life elsewhere evolved like life here, there is a good chance we are the most advanced.  Those that would have been more "advanced" would have surely destroyed themselves by now.

We didn't and we have been run by a bunch of morons for 100's of years. Safe to say others didn't and there are easily (conservatively) 1000's of other civilizations in the milky way. There are estimated to be between 200-400 billion stars in our galzxy. Hell, that latest star has the potential to have 3 planets with intelligent life on them....at the same time.

 

[Parrothead]

Not a chance. We are like an amoeba that rides the short bus to some civilizations.

our meeting with aliens

 

[matttyl]

Lets say there is intelligent life on these newly discovered planets (or really anywhere).  How would they know we exist?  Their telescopes would have to be extremely, extremely powerful (possibly beyond the physical realm of capabilities) in order to see any signs of us here.  Our radio signals would be so extremely faint at these distances as well.  Would they physically need to visit us to notice we're here?

 

[lod001]

TRAPPIST-1 “burns hydrogen so slowly that it will live for another 10 trillion years – more than 700 times longer than the Universe has existed so far.

Looks like these guys are gonna be a round long enough for us to visit.

 

[GregR]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/01/27/how-far-into-space-can-radio-telescopes-hear/#4b658868661e

Short version:  Australia is building a radio telescope that would be able to detect tv carrier waves at 50 light years.  Military and scientific radar tracking objects in our solar system isn't continuous like TV so you'd have to get lucky and point the right way at the right moment, but could be detectable out to tens or hundreds of thousands of light years to our current technology.

 

[matttyl]

TRAPPIST-1 “burns hydrogen so slowly that it will live for another 10 trillion years – more than 700 times longer than the Universe has existed so far.

Looks like these guys are gonna be a round long enough for us to visit.

Given that our Sun should only be around for another 5 billion years, we should really look into this.

 

[Galileo]

We didn't and we have been run by a bunch of morons for 100's of years. Safe to say others didn't and there are easily (conservatively) 1000's of other civilizations in the milky way. There are estimated to be between 200-400 billion stars in our galzxy. Hell, that latest star has the potential to have 3 planets with intelligent life on them....at the same time.

There are those who think we are well on our way... climate change, nuclear war, robot/AI revolution, overpopulation, zombie apocalypse...

 

[CurlyNight]

Great news on this discovery! We have a whole administration and congress ready to donate to any one of those lucky planets!

 

[joey]

Who thinks we're the most advanced life form in the Milky Way?

I think I've posted this great article in this thread before, but worth a re-repost...

[SIZE=12pt]http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html[/SIZE]

 

[Galileo]

Astronomical oxymoron: Seeing the unseeable!  First image of dark matter  

Researchers have been able to utilize the effects of gravitational lensing on light that we can see to effectively map out the the presence of dark matter associated with pairs of galaxies.