NASA's Kepler finds planets similar to Earth

[Ragns]

Surprised no one posted this already.

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered two new planetary systems that include three super-Earth-size planets in the "habitable zone," the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might be suitable for liquid water.

The Kepler-62 system has five planets; 62b, 62c, 62d, 62e and 62f. The Kepler-69 system has two planets; 69b and 69c. Kepler-62e, 62f and 69c are the super-Earth-sized planets.

Two of the newly discovered planets orbit a star smaller and cooler than the sun. Kepler-62f is only 40 percent larger than Earth, making it the exoplanet closest to the size of our planet known in the habitable zone of another star. Kepler-62f is likely to have a rocky composition. Kepler-62e, orbits on the inner edge of the habitable zone and is roughly 60 percent larger than Earth.

The third planet, Kepler-69c, is 70 percent larger than the size of Earth, and orbits in the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. Astronomers are uncertain about the composition of Kepler-69c, but its orbit of 242 days around a sun-like star resembles that of our neighboring planet Venus.

Scientists do not know whether life could exist on the newfound planets, but their discovery signals we are another step closer to finding a world similar to Earth around a star like our sun.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ke...kepler-69.html

[Qalbert]

dibs

[Cail]

dibs

Awww

[Mazmaz]

Didn't Miz post some super grim fact stating that we can never travel to any of these places due to limitations of physics?

[Grey Jorildyn]

I wanted to post this, but I was lazy. Cool stuff.

[Byrthnoth]

Didn't Miz post some super grim fact stating that we can never travel to any of these places due to limitations of physics?

Probably not. Time-wise "we" cannot travel to these planets. Humanity can probably travel there eventually as long as you're willing to measure the trip in generations. There are problems to overcome, but they're more feasibility issues rather than laws of physics.

A few issues:
* How do you get maintain enough energy to perpetuate life once you've left our solar system? - Solar would suck. Nuclear would work, but it isn't infinite and has safety issues.
* How do you store/generate enough energy to compensate for any trajectory inaccuracies? - Minor inaccuracies when leaving our galaxy would be magnified over the long trip, and you'd potentially end up needing to spend quite a bit of energy adjusting your course
* How do you generate enough energy to get the ship out of the atmosphere and traveling as fast as possible? - Assemble it in orbit? How do you escape orbit? It would take a lot of energy with a huge ship.
* How do you transfer the culture with the ship? - Even if you successfully travel to another solar system, the next generation would be pretty different from current humans, because they would be people solely raised on the ship. They wouldn't know what earth looked like.
* What health issues would occur due to being in space for so long? Would pregnancy work in space?, etc.

If we feel like it, these problems can be overcome within a few generations if we feel like it.

[Helm]

Neat. GO SCIENCE!

[Tyrath]

More this, less blowing things up please. This is really cool.

[Mazmaz]

Probably not. Time-wise "we" cannot travel to these planets. Humanity can probably travel there eventually as long as you're willing to measure the trip in generations. There are problems to overcome, but they're more feasibility issues rather than laws of physics.

A few issues:
* How do you get maintain enough energy to perpetuate life once you've left our solar system? - Solar would suck. Nuclear would work, but it isn't infinite and has safety issues.
* How do you store/generate enough energy to compensate for any trajectory inaccuracies? - Minor inaccuracies when leaving our galaxy would be magnified over the long trip, and you'd potentially end up needing to spend quite a bit of energy adjusting your course
* How do you generate enough energy to get the ship out of the atmosphere and traveling as fast as possible? - Assemble it in orbit? How do you escape orbit? It would take a lot of energy with a huge ship.
* How do you transfer the culture with the ship? - Even if you successfully travel to another solar system, the next generation would be pretty different from current humans, because they would be people solely raised on the ship. They wouldn't know what earth looked like.
* What health issues would occur due to being in space for so long? Would pregnancy work in space?, etc.

If we feel like it, these problems can be overcome within a few generations if we feel like it.

Yes but something about the force of the velocity on our bodies would make travel time not feasible? Like we can't go faster than a certain speed

[BaneTheBrawler]

well we don't have the particle shielding to protect ourselves if we get going too fast. that could be it. because once you get going that fast, shit starts just going through your ship unless you have a way to stop it. which can kill you. and also we can't accelerate fast enough to make the trip in any decent amount of time, because of ketchup people syndrome. accelerate too fast and people turn into ketchup.

so there's that. i don't think we have anything that can cause the second problem, but we also don't have anything to fix the first problem, so... yeah. not practical yet. once overcrowding becomes a serious problem, and the need for colonization really becomes urgent, we'll see more focus on space tech in general (always assuming, of course, that we don't nuke ourselves back to the stone age first), but extrasolar tech in particular. but that'll take a century or two at least.

[archibaldcrane]

Hardly confirmed for "similar to earth" - more just "less than twice earth's size, in star's "habitable zone". We don't know if any of them have liquid water, atmospheres, are under 200 degrees, etc.

[archibaldcrane]

and also we can't accelerate fast enough to make the trip in any decent amount of time, because of ketchup people syndrome. accelerate too fast and people turn into ketchup.

What do you mean "decent enough"? If you accelerate at the speed of gravity on earth (9.8m/s^2), you reach 0.1c in a month - or the speed of light in 10 months.

Yeah 10 months is a long time kinda, but "the time it takes to get up to speed" isn't really the problem when you're talking about thousands of light years away.

[Uzor]

And where do you plan on getting the energy to constantly accelerate at 9.8m/s^2?

10 months is nice in theory, but the energy and fuel required to do it wouldn't make it feasible. It also doesn't solve the other issues mentioned even if you could find the energy and fuel to do it. And even if you could solve all the issues, light speed would only be fast enough to get to the nearest stars within 10-30 years. Wouldn't be fast enough to get across the galaxy or to other galaxies within any reasonable amount of time.

Sure, you could move star system to star system once you suck a planet dry, but what's the fun in that?

[archibaldcrane]

I'm just pointing out that time-wise it's not that hard to get up to the speed of light without "turning humans to ketchup."

And actually my math was a little off - at 9.8m/s^2 it takes about 11.5 months to hit c.

[Mizango]

Yes, posted this on my FB earlier, since we dont have a nerd subforum *cough *cough we just nerd up my wall.

This is now a theoretical thread.

[Kryssan]

Probably not. Time-wise "we" cannot travel to these planets. Humanity can probably travel there eventually as long as you're willing to measure the trip in generations. There are problems to overcome, but they're more feasibility issues rather than laws of physics.

A few issues:
* How do you get maintain enough energy to perpetuate life once you've left our solar system? - Solar would suck. Nuclear would work, but it isn't infinite and has safety issues.
* How do you store/generate enough energy to compensate for any trajectory inaccuracies? - Minor inaccuracies when leaving our galaxy would be magnified over the long trip, and you'd potentially end up needing to spend quite a bit of energy adjusting your course
* How do you generate enough energy to get the ship out of the atmosphere and traveling as fast as possible? - Assemble it in orbit? How do you escape orbit? It would take a lot of energy with a huge ship.
* How do you transfer the culture with the ship? - Even if you successfully travel to another solar system, the next generation would be pretty different from current humans, because they would be people solely raised on the ship. They wouldn't know what earth looked like.
* What health issues would occur due to being in space for so long? Would pregnancy work in space?, etc.

If we feel like it, these problems can be overcome within a few generations if we feel like it.

The best way would be not to send humans. We can use learning machines / robots to explore out there - and play in our sandbox here for the time being. Give them 3d printers that have the capability or replicating the robots and the printers - assuming tech on these advances enough that they could make the required materials for said machines. Who knows, maybe we can catch up to our robots later as tech advances?

As for nuclear, it isn't infinite but a fast reactor has the capability to be producing power long after the materials holding it together have failed. So for all practical purposes, its virtually limitless in duration with respect to whatever mission profile you were shooting for - which is unlikely to be 'unlimited' anyway. Given that we've already proven a thermal reactor can last for several decades, your mission scope timeframe is well in hand. ( Fast and Thermal refer to neutron energy / speed )

For launch, the smart choice would be to assemble in space and use a large planet's gravity well for a slingshot exit - it's your best 'starting' choice currently available.


The real problems I see ( in the scope of these limited items mentioned ) is the need for coolant and the need for lots of raw material. You could use the Brayton cycle instead of the Rankine cycle for the reactor complex ( or skip / buck the trend and use a metal salt ), but plenty of the other systems would require coolant as well - what do you do for makeup / replacement volumes? How do you manage heat exchange of large reactive systems in an environment where eventually you will have to radiatively dissipate your 'waste' energy? ( we do have designs that can air cool production / power reactors now on the table, but we wouldn't even have that benefit in space ) For reference, we've ( collectively, as in all of Earth's nations that have gone to space ) put several dozen 'reactors' in space, but the largest of these only generated a small amount of electrical power for a finite period ( 5kWe for approx. 3-5 years ). NASA's current Moon / Mars reactor complex design can generate 40kWe in theory / simulation, but it requires >100 sq. meters worth of radiator complex. How do you estimate for all the planned materials that the ship will need after launch, and what feasible way do you provide them?

[Indalecia]

In before someone mentions bubbles or inertial compensators.

[Kryssan]

Bubbles? We got those. ( link )

[Tajin]

Launch into orbit for dummies thanks to NASA: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/conghand/traject.htm

Edit: haha woops thats 1958 material, still a good read though

[Byrthnoth]

tbqh, I think if you're talking about actually going to another solar system you have to pretty much assume the the ship is going to be massive. The OP planets are 1200 light years away. The fastest spaceship humans have ever made travels at 70 km/sec, or 1/4285 the speed of light. Assuming that we did manage to increase this speed by ~400 times and travel at 1/10 the speed of light, it would still take us 12,000 years to reach the planets in question. That's more than twice the written history of the human race. How large and how sturdy a ship would you need so that it could sustain itself and its occupants for 12,000 years? Would you have to harvest asteroids for metals to make replacement parts? It just feels so completely impossible. Go forth, physics. Figure out how to accelerate humans to 100x the speed of light so that we can make the journey in a paltry 12 years.