1 PM EST: NASA to Host News Conference on Discovery Beyond Our Solar System

  On 2/22/2017 at 7:29 PM, ambermonk said:

It would be neat if we could start sending drones or rovers to these exoplanets. But I can't imagine how one would go about funding that kind of venture. Currently it seems that most of the wealth necessary to fund it has wound up in the wrong hands.

well you could ask the MASTERS of said money to contribute some

  On 2/22/2017 at 9:30 PM, colunga said:

Damn too bad the administration just announced they're going to roll back all of the planets.

*orbits done got fucked*, an album by The Gummint

  On 2/23/2017 at 2:14 AM, apriorion said:

 

  On 2/23/2017 at 1:00 AM, Deer said:

 

  On 2/22/2017 at 11:56 PM, ambermonk said:

Wormholes maybe? Would that solve the distance issue?

 

But I'm no theoretical physicist.

 

 

if you travel thru a wormhole you will reappear on the other side as a stream of single atoms, not good 

 

 

That could still be useful for sending a "message in a bottle"-type transmission, though, yeah? 

 

what will we have to do in send a probe made out of smart atom-size microbots that can re-assemble itself atom by atom back to its original form once it passes tru the wormhole 

>atom-size

Waiting for somebody like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Stephen Hawking to chime in on this. Surely they can explain the possibilities of traversing a course of multiple light years better than I can. Even if atomization of the "package" is inevitable, would there still be a way for it to arrive at its destination intact over that great of a distance?

I'm sure they've already given an explanation relevant to the question at hand tho. I'm just curious what they'd have to say on the discovery of this particular group of exoplanets.

What makes you think they would have anything new to say? Yes, it's news. Kinda. But there's no scientific breakthrough to be found anywhere. Or some paradigmshift in our thinking about the galaxy. So, yeah... there are floating rocks in the galaxy with conditions similar to those of earth. Life? Yeah, probably. Intelligent? Probably not. At least, not scifi intelligent. Or we would have already noticed area51s on every street corner.

Rather than wasting time sending probes, what would be more beneficial and produce results in our lifetimes would be the construction of a massive space-based coronagraphic telescope to be able to focus in and get detailed images of these planets. At the moment with ground based telescopes this is the best we can do:

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--zgYa5xXk--/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/1437976292329987471.png

  On 2/23/2017 at 9:45 AM, Salvatorin said:

Rather than wasting time sending probes, what would be more beneficial and produce results in our lifetimes would be the construction of a massive space-based coronagraphic telescope to be able to focus in and get detailed images of these planets. At the moment with ground based telescopes this is the best we can do:

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--zgYa5xXk--/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/1437976292329987471.png

agreed, it's incredible how improved the extrasolar search abilities have become in just the last decade or so

I took an astronomy class centered on the Drake Equation and focused on the search for ET life at UT Austin (which has a pretty decent astronomy department and associated telescope in West Texas). This was back in 2005/2006 and the majority of extrasolar planets found were huge gas giants around small stars. They hadn't even come close to finding Earth size planets, let alone anything in the "Goldilocks" zone. I would love to take that class now.

It's mind-boggling to think that our closest neighbour star, Alpha Centauri, is a mere 4 light years away, but would take us 137,000 YEARS to get there travelling at 20,000 mph.

Until we can dramatically speed up and get closer to the speed of light velocity-wise, telescopes are the only way we can even begin to explore these far off planets.

  On 2/22/2017 at 9:08 PM, Joyrex said:

I was thinking about how neat it would be to look up in the sky on one of these planets and see the others... talk about a breathtaking sight.

btw: has there been any indication any of these planetoids have moons? i know they've said they could be tidally locked towards their host sun, and they're all pretty close to it but since it's an ultra cool star they're not burning up, but maybe the planetoids themselves aren't hosts to alien life, but their satellites 

also, for some reason, i've always wondered whether the key to traveling to other systems is as easy as walking through a door and emerging on the other side at a different star system, rather than traveling for generations through interstellar space

The two movies I thought that did space travel realistically were 2010 and Interstellar - I thought in Interstellar they handled the idea of a worm hole pretty well.

^^ interesting choices as i think both those films were trying to "be the next 2001" considering one was it's sequel and the other had the director's reputation at stake

  On 2/23/2017 at 8:49 AM, goDel said:

What makes you think they would have anything new to say? Yes, it's news. Kinda. But there's no scientific breakthrough to be found anywhere. Or some paradigmshift in our thinking about the galaxy. So, yeah... there are floating rocks in the galaxy with conditions similar to those of earth. Life? Yeah, probably. Intelligent? Probably not. At least, not scifi intelligent. Or we would have already noticed area51s on every street corner.

Yeah, I'm coming around to the idea that while there may quite well be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, humans are effectively alone due to the facts that interstellar/intergalactic distances are so freakin Uuuge and that relativity - in particular the cosmic speed limit c - is law.

Our popular portrayals of scientific advancements have created this false sense that, since we have been able to achieve certain things once thought impossible (e.g., moon landings, harnessing nuclear energy, near-instantaneous communication across the whole world), that it is only a matter of time before we're able to master things that are currently impossible.  In this case I reckon that I think we're going to find out (or extinguish ourselves before finding out) that getting past the speed limit of light (i.e. communication faster than, travel at or close to) really is impossible.

Wormholes and quantum entanglement are fascinating concepts, but my understanding of these theoretical shortcuts is that they either require absurd amounts of energy and/or forms of energy we've never tapped into.  This is before you even get into the engineering (I'm an engineer) of a practical application.  How do you go about making a wormhole?  How would you go about telling it you want to come out at the Trappist system?  (No Stargate pics pls)

I do however think it would be really, really, really, really, really fun to go for a speed of light ride though.

Cutting a hole through spacetime is a pretty tricky endeavor. Even black holes don't have the gravitational force to do so.

  On 2/23/2017 at 7:14 PM, Nebraska said:

^^ interesting choices as i think both those films were trying to "be the next 2001" considering one was it's sequel and the other had the director's reputation at stake

Well, just my humble opinion, of course - I enjoyed Arthur C. Clarke's book series 2001, 2010, and 2061 more than the movies (wished they'd make a 2061 movie; that really was the culmination of the story and I haven't read 3001...

Damn, I just realized I never read 3001!

The most theoretically feasible thing to do at the moment would be to send a probe to some distant system (it could accelerate there very quickly, so wouldn't be limited to a manned mission accelerating at 1g, e.g. could get to Trappist in 50-60 years), the probe would have some spooky entangled matter linked to similar spooky stuff back home. Once it arrives it would bootstrap a bunch of tech out there, and we would communicate with (and control) it instantaneously via the spooky link (i.e. exploring the system/planets with robots controlled with immersive VR rigs, and/or general AIs if we've figured them out by then). Even some kind of a teleporter deal down said spooky-link is probably more feasible than using wormholes to travel through. We could von-neumann-device-colonise the entire galaxy relatively quickly using this method.

  On 2/23/2017 at 9:33 PM, Joyrex said:

 

  On 2/23/2017 at 7:14 PM, Nebraska said:

^^ interesting choices as i think both those films were trying to "be the next 2001" considering one was it's sequel and the other had the director's reputation at stake

Well, just my humble opinion, of course - I enjoyed Arthur C. Clarke's book series 2001, 2010, and 2061 more than the movies (wished they'd make a 2061 movie; that really was the culmination of the story and I haven't read 3001...

 

Damn, I just realized I never read 3001!

 

fair enough.

i watched 2001 BEFORE i ever read the books. the first time i was very young and watched it with my dad but didn't care much for it. the 2nd time was in japan with my girlfriend at the time. it was annoyingly subtitled in japanese which distracted me a lot so.... upon arrival back to the united states i gave it another viewing. blew my mind.

2010 was interesting but vastly disappointing because you learn nothing about the monoliths (except they don't want us going to europa (?) after blowing up jupiter). i did enjoy russian helen mirren though

btw: harkening back to the problem of traveling to distant star systems. arthur c clarke was asked once by a reporter how he was able to write so convincingly about far out worlds. his answer: "because i've been there"

  On 2/23/2017 at 10:03 PM, caze said:

The most theoretically feasible thing to do at the moment would be to send a probe to some distant system (it could accelerate there very quickly, so wouldn't be limited to a manned mission accelerating at 1g, e.g. could get to Trappist in 50-60 years), the probe would have some spooky entangled matter linked to similar spooky stuff back home. Once it arrives it would bootstrap a bunch of tech out there, and we would communicate with (and control) it instantaneously via the spooky link (i.e. exploring the system/planets with robots controlled with immersive VR rigs, and/or general AIs if we've figured them out by then). Even some kind of a teleporter deal down said spooky-link is probably more feasible than using wormholes to travel through. We could von-neumann-device-colonise the entire galaxy relatively quickly using this method.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement

  Quote

It is not possible, however, to use this effect to transmit classical information at faster-than-light speeds.

  On 2/23/2017 at 10:30 PM, Braintree said:

 

  Quote

It is not possible, however, to use this effect to transmit classical information at faster-than-light speeds.

 

That's not correct actually. Well, maybe it is, but it's not ruled out completely, we don't really know for sure. 

It's more likely than building a wormhole is all I'm saying.

Yeah, but the information can't be attached to a pair of particles that are entangled.

  On 2/23/2017 at 10:54 PM, Braintree said:

Yeah, but the information can't be attached to a pair of particles that are entangled.

There's a thing called the no-communication theorem, the thing that rules this kind of stuff out, but the theorem makes certain assumptions about the nature of quantum mechanics, assumptions which we don't know for certain are true or not, if they're not then instantaneous communication with entangled particles could be possible. Again, wasn't trying to suggest it's likely to be true, just more likely than wormholes, which require negative mass to be a thing (something which violates all kinds of fundamental principles of physics, some of which are also assumptions made in general relativity, and might be wrong, but they have more experimental support backing them up), negative mass would also open up possibilities for superluminal communication (another reason why it's probably not viable).

Yes, it's a long-winded explanation as to why they wouldn't be able to communicate with one another since neither of them necessarily send a signal. However, empirically, this isn't necessarily true. They work in tandem regardless of distance.

What I'm saying is that you can't attach information to a single entangled particle and have it "transmit" more information to its counterpart. That facet of the theory doesn't work. The only thing they "relay" is their polarization.

Aside: I put those in quotations because those words assume the particles know about each other. Which is what the no-communication theorem addresses.