Possible Earth like planet found

[GRT]

in the guy's theory we aren't moving, everything else is i think....

i suck at his explanation though, i'm not a physisist ><

if i could remember the show i seen it on i'd post it but it's not likely i will unless they show the show i seen on tv

I've seen many shows on discovery chanel about space traveling, and many are closer to science fiction than physics. It's better to stick to physics book and actual equation than someone's dream.

If those kind of thing were possible, I'm certain I would have heard about them in one of my astrophysics class or in a book. They generally list every theories and possibilities, and sadly, there is no magic that will help us for space traveling

while I certainly base all my scientific knowledges on our laws of physics, I also keep in mind that the entire system of our understanding in physics is based on our understanding of the matter and its behavior

interestingly, more and more recent discoveries are challenging that understanding

the most observer-friendly "challenge" i've seen so far lies in the discoveries by a japanese scientist, Dr. Masaru Emoto, who took photographs of water molecules in crystal forms... you should check out his book called "Hidden Messages in Water," which documented the extraordinary discovery that human emotions can change the behavior of water molecules and thus the shape of the crystalized form. it's quite fascinating

[Raineer]

Yeah but when we look out and find things you're not just looking over distance but over time. By measuring red-light-shift we can tell the distance of a star (and therefore how old that light is you're seeing.)

Unless the aztecs/mayans were up to some crazy shit I doubt we have given off any easily-detectable emissions for anything over the last 100 years. There's always a chance there has been an intelligent life-form on this planet before us but it's not likely in the last 300 million years as geologists would have most likely found it.

The planet began forming what like 4-5 billion years ago? If the aliens had our technology they'd be able to see basic chemical composition of materials in our solar system. That alone would probably make it a worthwhile target for any advanced civilization looking for new planets or new life.

Well I could see that, but then again it would take some serious smarts to leave then to know that 4 billion years later it would be worth something to them.

Hard to say, interesting to talk about though.

[Kaylia]

Some other civilization that's been around for billions of years longer than ours (universe is supposedly 15-16 billion years old, so maybe they are 5b years old like our planet). Maybe they figured out wormholes and how to survive the trip.

Tell me what element of the table can bend space time, and connect it to another region of space? To affect time/space, you need huge mass (hence why I'm always talking about "infinite energy source" in my last few post). Is it possible possible to handle such energy in a world like ours?

Another view is to not forget that it doesn't have to be a carbon-based life form, and possibly somewhere like Titan could be housing life as well. There are creatures here that live without sun or oxygen in almost pure sulfuric acid (just watch Planet Earth), it is true they are simple creatures but they also have predators. Who knows if such a life form could evolve further without said natural predators.

The creature in the bottom of the sea feed up with stuff comming from the surface tho. Either way, life could exist under different form, but the one we know also happen to be based on the element that are the most common.

I'm surprised by the 'ruckus' generated by this announcement, we know countless stars being surrounded by planets...this one just happens to be close enough to measure the distance and size fairly precisely.

Because we can confirm our hypothesis that Earth like planet exist and are common? It's a step in the right direction to find a planet almost identical to our.

[Scythiroth]

This is pretty cool, too bad getting to something that far is pretty much impossible. ; ;

I think we need to advance more before we end up destroying another planet though.

[Miltani]

if we move at the speed of light doesn't everything around us starts to slow down? This is all i remember from my astrology class

[Raineer]

Tell me what element of the table can bend space time, and connect it to another region of space? To affect time/space, you need huge mass (hence why I'm always talking about "infinite energy source" in my last few post). Is it possible possible to handle such energy in a world like ours?

Well tell me what element of the table a black hole is made of? It's not all perfectly explainable in such a matter. However I agree about the infinite energy source, I posted about the same thing.

Because we can confirm our hypothesis that Earth like planet exist and are common? It's a step in the right direction to find a planet almost identical to our.

Well.......ok true.... I guess it's interesting to be able to "see" what we should already know is out there. There's billions of stars and billions of rocks out there, the likelyhood of one being near-earth size and somewhere close to 93m miles from a sun-sized star is very likely. I didn't really know there was a hypothesis that needed to be proven, but in that last sentence I made a great assumption so I do see your point.

[Marsala]

Ok guys I figured it out. We need to make stargates. Lets talk to Richard Dean Anderson, He will know how since he had the ancients database downloaded into his head multiple times in the last couple seasons.

[Kaylia]

Technically, there is no possible way for aliens to have started a trip millions years ago, because they had no idea we were there (and still don't). Mankind havent started emitting electromagnetic wave till very recently, so nothing in a radius smaller than 100 light year should be conscious of our existance. And this is assuming they are scanning the sky to discover new species, and were lucky enough to fall on our signal (very unlikely).
Unless they have a scanner that break physics laws....

Maybe they had a telescope? We find planets and quite honestly our technology isn't even close to being maxed out.

Do me a favor, type "light wikipedia" in google and go read. Not trying to sound rude, but I don't think you have what's needed to argue about physics atm.

Telescope is going to show you the light that reached your planet. If you are looking at a planet 10 millions light years away, it's like looking at a 10 millions old pictures. There is oxygen and life, but that's about it, not civilisation or anything. Also, you need to keep in mind that light is a "wave" when you are talking about observing distant stuff. What does it mean? You can't obtain picture with better resolution than the wave length. The smallest pixel is going to match the wave length of the electromagnetic wave you are observing.

I don't feel like calculating the size of the telescope you would need if you wanted to get a clear shot of a planet like Earth. They can probably find planet with oxygen and water, but that's about it.

[Shadowedge64]

As a geology major i'll give as much insight as i can.

Earth has been dated isotopically by asteroids/moon samples to be about 4.6Ga (billion) years old. The oldest rocks found on earth are around 4.0-3.9Ga (billion) years old. I'm not sure on the exact date of humans, but i think mammals in general have been dominant for about 65Ma (million) years. So although it is really cool imo that they found this planet because this is the kind of stuff i want to study in the future, the reality is that is it prob a really long shot that any "intelligent" life will be found, and a bigger problem being able to communicate with them in a timely manner, let alone trying to visit them.

Just going by earth history, I would guess that the people who discovered this planet are possibly trying to find exact conditions. If you dont believe in creationism, the earlist life on earth actually formed with no oxygen in the atmosphere (and there was an experiment that duplicated this also), with oxygen appering the the atmosphere in the Paleozoic era of the Proterozoic Eon around 2.5-1.6Ga (billion) years ago. After that it was mostly bacteria (stomatolites, aka mostly limestone fromers) and some protists. Hopefully they will do more research and find out what kind of geologic processes are going on and if oxygen is already abundant because that could mean life exists already on the planet and is already evolving, if not already as/more intelligent than us considering its so many light years away and as someone mentioned, we're actually seeing the planet in the past and not in current conditions (going by their word since im a geologist, not a physicist). Ill keep up on this topic since it is particular intrest if anyone has more geologic questions that hopefully i can anwser.

Also someone said something about the planet being red, but i think they misread and looked at the info about the stars around the planet which i think they said were red. However if the planet is red, its means that there is most likely oxygen since red is an indication of oxidation and "redbeds" full of iron which means there is a good chance life does exist (ie: photosynthesis) and is giving off oxygen to help drive the oxidation of the planet.

[Stilgar]

if we move at the speed of light doesn't everything around us starts to slow down? This is all i remember from my astrology class

I'm not physicist, but in Orson Scott Card's books, traveling at a speed approaching the speed of light effectively slows time for the traveler, so that for objects moving at a slower speed (i.e. people on a planet), much more time passes by in a given interval. A person can take a starship journey lasting a week to them that lasts 20 years to people back on Earth.

It's relativity, Einstein's theory. No, I don't understand how it works, but there it is.

[Kaylia]

i think by the next millenium when people look back at the "laws of physics" that we believe in so firmly right now they will laugh at how fragile those laws really are

Yet, we don't laugh at Newton and still use his laws (more than Einstein actually). The laws we use don't explain everything, but they are pretty accurate estimate for the domain they cover, so it's not wrong to say we have to overcome the difficulty stated by relativity, even if we discover news physics model.

Yeah but when we look out and find things you're not just looking over distance but over time. By measuring red-light-shift we can tell the distance of a star (and therefore how old that light is you're seeing.)

Red light shift is used to detect the expansion of space (and the speed a galaxy are getting away from us), not the distance it has from us.

Unless I forgot something..my physics class are getting far.
Closest star = parallax + pythagora
After that, they were comparing the intensity and other stuff.

[Xavier]

Well.......ok true.... I guess it's interesting to be able to "see" what we should already know is out there. There's billions of stars and billions of rocks out there, the likelyhood of one being near-earth size and somewhere close to 93m miles from a sun-sized star is very likely. I didn't really know there was a hypothesis that needed to be proven, but in that last sentence I made a great assumption so I do see your point.

This planet was 5 times larger than Earth and actually much closer to its "sun" than our planet, but its sun was 1/3rd the size of ours, meaning the distance was appropriate for the heat its sun would be generating.

In all honesty, we've shown we're very capable of spreading across a planet and devouring it. I don't see whats going to stop us from spreading across the universe and doing the same to any planet that can support us. Even if its not inter-planetary travel but just outward colonization with no contact inbetween planets (meaning one-way lifetime trips), I still see the human race spreading, but I doubt anytime soon.

[Bweigelt]

if we move at the speed of light doesn't everything around us starts to slow down? This is all i remember from my astrology class

I'm not physicist, but in Orson Scott Card's books, traveling at a speed approaching the speed of light effectively slows time for the traveler, so that for objects moving at a slower speed (i.e. people on a planet), much more time passes by in a given interval. A person can take a starship journey lasting a week to them that lasts 20 years to people back on Earth.

It's relativity, Einstein's theory. No, I don't understand how it works, but there it is.

Yeah, if you were to travel at .999 of the speed of light time will tick at about 1/100 of what it does on earth. So for every one year you would experience on the ship and universe will have aged 100 years.

[GRT]

according to einstein, it's impossible for any matter to travel at the speed of light, no matter under what condition (vacuum space or whatever), so if our current "laws of physics" stays applicable, nobody is going to time travel lol

and even more--a lot more--fragile than physics is the laws of life. every life we observed so far are born under the given condition of our earth; life on another planet, no matter how earth-like, is more than likely gonna be completely different than what's found on earth; who's to say they need oxygen, warmth, water? what people are going to try and find on that planet is really not just life, but bio based life similar to that on earth

[Bweigelt]

according to einstein, it's impossible for any matter to travel at the speed of light, no matter under what condition (vacuum space or whatever), so if our current "laws of physics" stays applicable, nobody is going to time travel lol

and even more--a lot more--fragile than physics is the laws of life. every life we observed so far are born under the given condition of our earth; life on another planet, no matter how earth-like, is more than likely gonna be completely different than what's found on earth; who's to say they need oxygen, warmth, water? what people are going to try and find on that planet is really not just life, but bio based life similar to that on earth

Yeah as soon as you reach the speed of light you become light and there is no way to revert back. Until we find a way to jump over the speed of light without ever reaching it we won't be getting to far out in the universe.

[Xavier]

Reread the article, the planet they found was 50% bigger than Earth, 5 times as much mass, so I assume that means its gravity would be significantly stronger than Earth? Its sun is also a red star, not yellow like ours. Not to mention (unrelated to the planet discovery) that they found a new substance which had the same chemical makeup as kryptonite from the Superman movie?

Am I the only one who thinks Superman lived there.

[Enkidu]

Technically, there is no possible way for aliens to have started a trip millions years ago, because they had no idea we were there (and still don't). Mankind havent started emitting electromagnetic wave till very recently, so nothing in a radius smaller than 100 light year should be conscious of our existance. And this is assuming they are scanning the sky to discover new species, and were lucky enough to fall on our signal (very unlikely).
Unless they have a scanner that break physics laws....

Maybe they had a telescope? We find planets and quite honestly our technology isn't even close to being maxed out.

Do me a favor, type "light wikipedia" in google and go read. Not trying to sound rude, but I don't think you have what's needed to argue about physics atm.

Telescope is going to show you the light that reached your planet. If you are looking at a planet 10 millions light years away, it's like looking at a 10 millions old pictures. There is oxygen and life, but that's about it, not civilisation or anything. Also, you need to keep in mind that light is a "wave" when you are talking about observing distant stuff. What does it mean? You can't obtain picture with better resolution than the wave length. The smallest pixel is going to match the wave length of the electromagnetic wave you are observing.

I don't feel like calculating the size of the telescope you would need if you wanted to get a clear shot of a planet like Earth. They can probably find planet with oxygen and water, but that's about it.

Huh? What are your qualifications for such a claim? I probably know just as much or more about light then most on this board.

Your problem is that you're narrow-minded. You think based on human technology and refuse to understand that their may be life that has existed much longer then we have and with that has aquired a much much higher level of technology. Right now if we hooked up every single super computer in America we could probably take a "currently" forming galaxy and pan out how it will form. We could probably single out growing stars and determine whether or not it will form a planetary system.

If you assume a much higher level of intelligence, an alien race could have predicted the formation of our galaxy and/or the formation of our solar system. It's just a matter of data crunching and computing power. It doesn't matter if they *know* we're here, that probably wouldn't be the point of aliens coming to this solar system. The point would be expansion, something that is inevitable for any intelligent lifeform for obvious reasons.

[GRT]

i think by the next millenium when people look back at the "laws of physics" that we believe in so firmly right now they will laugh at how fragile those laws really are

Yet, we don't laugh at Newton and still use his laws (more than Einstein actually). The laws we use don't explain everything, but they are pretty accurate estimate for the domain they cover, so it's not wrong to say we have to overcome the difficulty stated by relativity, even if we discover news physics model.

actually, Einstein himself laughed at Newton at some respects. I'm not a physicist, but I have read about how some of Newton's "laws" are not applicable in many microphysics obervations.

The biggest contridictory in recent physics debate is in the "established" laws of thermodynamics, where heat in many cases are not equalized but self contained. That's where the most cutting edge studies of irregularity and chaos theory are born.

The thing is, though, that popular past discoveries that became "laws" are rarely "wrong," but people, as their scientific understandings expand, will gain new perspectives and look at things at different angles, and they spot aspects of the same subject that they've never seen before, thus changing and perfecting past "laws."

Looking outside the box is the basis of science advancement.

[Raineer]

Red light shift is used to detect the expansion of space (and the speed a galaxy are getting away from us), not the distance it has from us.

Unless I forgot something..my physics class are getting far.
Closest star = parallax + pythagora
After that, they were comparing the intensity and other stuff.

hmmmm, I was quite certain that red-light-shift was the mechanism that was essentially used in gauging the age of the universe (the 15-16b figure). We always assumed that the universe was infinite except for the fact we stopped finding any stars older than that. I am sure red-light was used in that respect. Maybe it can only be used over time to determine the speed something is moving away, but I thought there was a way by comparing neighboring galaxies to know their overall distance.

As for Xavier, ok dude we get it...you've now mentioned like 5 times in this thread how we destroyed our planet. I doubt we're going to do the same with this one. Now you and Al head back to bed and get a good night's sleep.

[Enkidu]

actually, Einstein himself laughed at Newton at some respects. I'm not a physicist, but I have read about how some of Newton's "laws" are not applicable in many microphysics obervations.

Einsteins laws are not applicable in those cases either .