Topic: Livable Alien Planet Finally Discovered

Alan Boyle writes: Astronomers say they've found the first planet beyond our solar system that could have the right size and setting to sustain life as we know it, only 20 light-years from Earth.

"My own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent," Steven Vogt, an astrophysicist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, told reporters today. "I have almost no doubt about it."

The discovery, published online in The Astrophysical Journal, is the result of 11 years of observations at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Astronomers participating in the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey detected the planet by tracking the faint gravitational wobbles it produced in its parent star. Now they say there may well be many more planets out there like this one.

"The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common," Vogt said in a news release.

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http://www.the-bored-ninja.tk/2018/03/01/possible-earthlike-p...

I don't a scientist who estimates the likelihood of anything being 100 percent.

Sweet.

Interesting topic, for sure. I do always hate how scientists in this field talk about any number of lightyears as "only" or "relatively close", because any of it still means that none of us is EVER going to see or reach any of them.

It would take a REALLY fast space ship, of the kind that we haven't got yet, and multiple generations of people living their entire lives on that ship, to even get close to any of them, let alone finally reach them, and that is what massively ruins these kinds of discoveries for me, since it ultimately means that it's interesting to know, but still utterly useless at the same time.

Factoid:
"How long does it take to go a light year?

Mankind's speediest spacecraft so far (the New Horizons probe) travels at around 36,000 mph. At that rate it takes it almost six hours to go as far as light beam goes in one second. That's a ratio of one to 21,600. So that means current technology could get us to our nearest neighboring system at two LY away in 43,000 years."

Now, this newly discovered planet/planetoid is outside of our own galaxy, and taking into account that it already roughly takes around 100.000 years to travel across our own galaxy and get out into open space, it's clear to see how useless this information actually is.

The biggest thing that we, our children or even our grandchildren will ever witness, is probably people landing and living on Mars, but anything more ambitious than that is probably centuries away or even longer, provided that mankind will still be there around that time, since we do seem to have a knack for destroying our own civilizations every couple thousands of years...

Even if we could, why would you want to live on an extraterrestrial colony. It's be like No Man's Sky in real life. No society, no internet, and a vastly reduced selection of food. Hell, you probably wouldn't be able to buy things until the place got large enough to support capitalism without risking collapse.

@Haru17 Man, where's your sense of adventure? Not many things would be worth giving up modern conveniences to experience, but becoming a space pioneer definitely would be.

Only thing that would keep me back (aside from an obvious lack of skills needed to not be useless in such an environment) is family.

@ThanosReXXX I'm not even sure it's possible to get there over countless generations. I mean, look at how much our civilisation has changed in 2000 years. I doubt over the course of 100,000 years, our species would be able to remain constant and make it lol! Certainly food for thought.

@GrailUK Well, that's exactly what I meant with "provided that mankind will still be there around that time" and so on.

I believe we going to discover micro-bacterial life in our own solar system within the next couple of decades, whether that be on the moons of Encladus and/or Europa or perhaps even Titan. If we find that then it will surely suggest that life is abundant everywhere. We may not even need to wait that long though. Our understanding of what to look for and where for evidence of advanced or even intelligent life is improving all the time. If we were on a planet say 50 light years away from earth and we spotted it with the technology and knowledge we have now, we would know it had intelligent life due to the artificial effect we have on the atmosphere.

It's out there, it's everywhere, it's just a matter of time until we find it.

I don't believe we'll ever get to the stage where we can do interstellar travel though, at least from here on Earth anyway. Technology will become all too powerful and will be the end of us. The sooner we start colonising Mars the better. We achieve that, then the limits of non earth dwelling humans is endless.

@ThanosReXXX That's what ''relatively'' means

Considering our nearest galaxy neighbour is 2.5 million light-years away, I'd say that anything under 100 light-years is relatively close!

@OorWullie I wish people were as dedicated with sending unmanned spacecrafts to those moons as they were with the space race in the 60's. I believe NASA has a few flybys planned of several of those moons, but I don't think any landings are planned. Ganymede is another likely candidate (the only one with a magnetic field), all of them have a rocky mineral core, ice and water (though Titan has probably liquid ethane and methane), and they show some form of geological activity. If I ever found a few billion dollars on the street, I'd fund a mission to one of those moons.

@Octane Dòh, I'm not THAT dense...

It still annoys me, though. Mainly because they make it sound reachable, when in reality, it's anything but. And as such, I come full circle to my original statement that although interesting, it is still utterly useless to know that somewhere, approximately 430.000 human year's travel away, there might just be a planet that's similar to Earth, that we might be able to live on.

Unfortunately, that's "we" as a species, not you and me, obviously. So, for us, this has no impact or use whatsoever, nor will it for our great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great-grandchildren.

And that's putting it mildly, since I have no idea how nor the inclination to copy-paste the word "great" enough times to make up for 430.000 years...

Should only be a relatively short hop via the Mycelial network if we can make spore drives a reality!

@ThanosReXXX Yeah, that's true. Looking for potential habitable planets right now is definitely in the category of gaining knowledge for the sake of gaining knowledge. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that, but the practical applications such knowledge are few (if at all). I think that the technological aspect is far more interesting, the development of new and more precise technology to measure stuff like that are far more useful to us in the short term. The means to which they are currently used is just a neat side effect. (feel free to correct me on that)

But hey, at least it's better than living in a cave and beating rocks together (IMO)!

@Octane Can't argue with that.

Give @Ogo a week there and he will make it so you wont want to live there.

you think it would take that long?

@Ralizah Uhhh, well I think the concept of a random universe is that 99.99% of it is just filled with raw elements, black holes, burning hot dust, and — most commonly — literally nothing. If the planet has indigenous life that could be cool, but 'habitable' just means 'not on fire with an atmosphere and water.' Which sounds pretty boring for like your whole life.

They have found many extra solar planets in the habitable zone around other stars. All that means is that they are about the right distance from said star that liquid water could likely exist on the surface. You should do some more reading on the topic, it can be very interesting. It's always better to do the research yourself than to just take one or two news articles' word on the topic.

are any of these planets going to be for sale?

That will only be true if that life isn't based on DNA. If it IS based on DNA, the most likely explanation will be that all of the life in the solar system shared the same single origin.