posted by
LaminatorX
on Saturday March 08 2014, @05:30PM
from the cold-outside-with-no-kind-of-atmosphere dept.
from the cold-outside-with-no-kind-of-atmosphere dept.
AnonTechie writes:
"Three new planets classified as habitable-zone super-Earths are amongst eight new planets discovered orbiting nearby red dwarf stars by an international team of astronomers from the UK and Chile. The study identifies that virtually all red dwarfs, which make up at least three quarters of the stars in the Universe, have planets orbiting them. The research also suggests that habitable-zone super-Earth planets (where liquid water could exist and making them possible candidates to support life) orbit around at least a quarter of the red dwarfs in the Sun's own neighbourhood."
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Most Red Dwarf Stars Have at least One Planet
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Boxzy on Saturday March 08 2014, @05:53PM
Many are hoping we find some planets closer in size to earth, these super-earths are no good for colonisation. Sure, finding life would be great, I hope for a nice one G planet with water. Hell one and a half G would work after a few generations of adaptation.
If our species wants to survive long term, We Have To Get Off This Rock!
Go green, Go Soylent.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Saturday March 08 2014, @06:20PM
I think the rest of life in the universe might not want us out there. If we can't even figure out how to survive with each other, on a single planet, in a sustainable way, why would it be any different out there?
We have plenty of time actually. Not getting off this rock in the next couple hundred years, so the great exploration that will allow us to survive is within not without.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jimshatt on Saturday March 08 2014, @06:34PM
Interesting opinion, but I have to disagree. Why is it a requirement that a species can survive on its own planet before moving to the stars? Maybe it's a requirement to use the resources of an entire solar system to be able to reach the next. I know that sounds horrible, but nobody ever said the Golden Path would be pretty.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Saturday March 08 2014, @10:17PM
In the context of this discussion, the reason we needed to get off this planet is because we would otherwise expire. I see that as the premise motivating us to establish colonies in other star systems (at a minimum), terraforming planets (kind of hard to live on space stations), and ultimately be distributed enough so that even galaxies merging together or being consumed in black holes will not eliminate us. We may even enjoy the actual moments before heat death of the universe.
If I remember right, the short story Entropy was exactly about that. Beyond that, it may be possible for us to survive past heat death by proactively creating new universes simply to keep warm both metaphorically and literally.
Even considering all that, I don't think our ultimate survival would be in exploring outwards into our galaxy and start the distribution process to spread our DNA and awareness into the heavens.
If we can't find peace with each other, why would it be certain we could find peace with other life? I don't mean we would be having wars with space faring sentient creatures that just happen to have compatible genitalia for our captains. It is possible though that we would destroy an entire planet with life, simply because that life wasn't interesting enough to warrant ignoring the resources. That whole ants on an anthill in Africa thought experiment.
For whole hosts of reasons that I can conceive of alone, we could lose parts of ourselves out there because we ran out resources to keep up communication/transport lines, or just simply forgot. Humanity might be spread out across thousands of galaxies at the moment, and we were just a forgotten colony where an executive someplace felt the resources would be better used elsewhere. No different than us abandoning equipment, demolishing an unfinished building, or throwing away the rest of the taco because it was too much effort to save it in the fridge.
As corny as it may sound, I truly believe the most valuable exploration that humanity can undertake is within. If we can find peace with ourselves, we fill find peace with each other. Who knows what life may be out there, but I know we would move towards finding peace with them.
On not such a dramatic level, I believe that figuring out how to be sustainable and survive within a more or less closed system, gives us far more valuable skills that will allow us to expand outward and create a significantly more stable civilization that would have the ability to survive heat death. We want the shortcut so we don't have to deal with that learning experience, even though scientifically we have time. We are all so paranoid it seems about a meteor hitting us or a solar flare creating an extinction level event, we forget that the odds are low. We have millions of years at least before our own sun no longer supports us, and that's without technology moderating that support. Nobody ever considered we could create a shield powered by the sun itself and even survive inside the sun? We really do have plenty of time, just not enough time to survive the real threat.... ourselves. That's why what we really want is not time and opportunity it provides, but space away from each other because we are nut bags.
Heat death, in this discussion, really does represent the end. A star going supernova and taking out a planet, is absolutely nothing compared to cold finality of heat death. Time makes us not think about it, but damn. The distances involved just to experience another discrete element of anything is mind numbing.
At that point we will have to die no matter what, and if we cannot become the creators ourselves of existence, our expiration is final indeed. It would be nice to come to peace with that. In the relatively extremely short term, it would be nice just to come to peace with our own individually inevitable deaths.
TL;DR - We aren't mature enough to benefit from the being distributed out there. We really do need to grow up first.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by forsythe on Saturday March 08 2014, @07:41PM
I see this sentiment a lot, but with a sample size of one, I'm not really convinced at all. Assuming, for the moment, that the universe is crowded with sentient life, how do you know that all other races of the universe have figured out how to survive with each other in sustainable harmony, and that humanity is some terrible bastard child of the universe for not doing the same?
How do you know that, for example, that humanity isn't the only sentient race that actually cares about coexistence? It may very well be that all other life in the universe has killed itself off in mad xenocidal frenzy (or is in the process of doing so). Perhaps we are the only form of sentient life that thinks of war as regrettable. Perhaps we are the only form of sentient life that has a concept of "empathy". With absolutely no data, we certainly shouldn't be drawing any conclusions one way or the other just because it's fashionable to be self-denigrating.
Cute phrasing aside, the two are not mutually exclusive. We can talk about our feelings and sing Kumbaya in space as easily as on Earth. Perhaps easier, since a decent solution to conflicts in the past has been "Let one side of the conflict move very far away from the other, where they won't get in each others' faces all the time".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Daniel Dvorkin on Sunday March 09 2014, @12:28PM
I suppose it's possible to imagine an entire species of sentient beings without empathy--by our standards, a race of sociopaths--but it's harder to imagine that such a species would ever achieve the level organization necessary to create even so much as a basic agricultural civilization, to say nothing of space travel.
Pipedot [pipedot.org]:Soylent [dev.soylentnews.org]::BSD:Linux
(Score: 2) by Boxzy on Sunday March 09 2014, @02:29PM
The idea that it's even _possible_ to sort out all our differences, grow as a species and learn to live in tune with and not trampling over our environment while still on this planet is, to my mind, a little overly optimistic. Like you, I feel it likely that distance from the petty jealousies, the greed and other squabbles will enable humanity to grow. Though personally I feel that it is essential. This society is doomed, I could point to a thousand examples, ten thousand, that explain why internecine spats, ancient tribal disputes and superstitious idiocy.. oh, I'm getting tired just thinking of it all. There needs to be a new start, possibly genetically engineered new humans with as much intermixing of all genetic traits of all humanity as possible. Then and only then could those be emissaries. All humanity now existing will go down with the ship I fear.
Go green, Go Soylent.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09 2014, @03:51AM
The planets are out there, but currently our space telescopes cannot detect them. An Earth sized planet in an Earth sized orbit, in orbit around a Sol sized star is just outside of the reach of Kepler and Hubble. When the replacements for these scopes go up in a few years, we will have an unprecedented view of the galaxy around us.
(Score: 5, Informative) by frojack on Saturday March 08 2014, @06:27PM
It's not likely that we would find a habitable planet near a Red Dwarf.
There are Several Problems [wikipedia.org] with red dwarf planets that suggest the habitable zone would be very small, leading to tidally locked planets.
These are relatively cool as stars like ours go. Likely only the largest red dwarfs would have any habitable planets.
Discussion should abhor vacuity, as space does a vacuum.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Appalbarry on Saturday March 08 2014, @06:35PM
These days I've been re-reading (well,listening to actually) the whole long output of Robert Heinlein.
It's downright depressing to remember that there was a time, not that many decades ago, when we (as a race) were excited about space, and when we thought that investing in space exploration was an absolutely brilliant thing to do.
What on earth changed? Why did we go from boundless optimism and a sense of exploration and delight, to the current mess where anything beyond our own backyard is written off as unattainable? Is this, right now, the best that we can accomplish?
Yes there are people like Branson [virgingalactic.com] and Rutan [scaled.com] trying to keep the flame alive, and even hobbyist spacecraft builders, [copenhagen...bitals.com] but where are our governments and major corporations?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday March 08 2014, @07:26PM
What happened?
That's easy. You grew up.
Just, like everyone else, you finally figured out that Faster Than Light travel is not likely to happen until we rewrite the laws of physics. Having been dragged kicking and screaming to that realization, we decided the best bet is to take care of Earth.
The farthest Man will get in the foreseeable future is Mars, maybe Europa, and after that.... Nothing.
Even the envisioned Generation Ships [wikipedia.org] have virtually no chance of success, and no clear place to go.
Discussion should abhor vacuity, as space does a vacuum.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by KiloByte on Saturday March 08 2014, @08:18PM
Generation ships are not viable now. They're not that far from what existing technology allows for, which can't be said about colonizing other planets, be they in this solar system or elsewhere. Yes, going to a place a few AU away is obviously easier than to one many light years away, but the harder part is not the travel but doing something productive (like surviving) once we actually get there.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by mhajicek on Saturday March 08 2014, @09:03PM
Humankind will be unrecognizable in a few hundred years. Singularity anyone? Attempting to predict now what capabilities will exist then is a stab in the dark.
(Score: 1) by el_oscuro on Saturday March 08 2014, @09:28PM
Read "Rendezvous with Rama" again. It was first published in 1972, and is set in the 22nd century. The differences in our technology and that envisioned in the 22nd century are stark. The Kindle I read it on probably had a lot more computing power then the 22nd century computers envisioned. Similarly, our telescopes can find planets on distant star systems, so it would be hard to imagine it being hard to get telescope time to locate a 50KM object in our solar system in the 22nd century. Even if you have read this novel, just going back and reading it 20 or 40 years later can be very interesting.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Maow on Sunday March 09 2014, @02:45AM
What happened?
Neither Heinlein nor Asimov nor Clark were adolescents when they were authoring their great works.
No, something else happened that's turned us inwards.
But it can hardly be argued that we're currently taking care of Earth. If that were the trade off that we made as a species, I could accept it. But we've gone the opposite direction. While there might be some awareness and desire to protect Earth (meaning the ecosystems that we depend upon), our population growth and energy sources / usage are not really sustainable; our climate is not going to cooperate with a 7 billion person population at the status quo either.
100% agreement there.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mhajicek on Saturday March 08 2014, @08:10PM
It's just that there are a few more steps between here and there. The next step is mining and manufacturing in space near Earth, which many people are excitedly working on. NASA is working in concert with private companies now, for example they're planning to launch the Orion on a Spacex Falcon Heavy. The Orion's maiden test flight is scheduled for this fall.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 08 2014, @08:38PM
now all we need is warp drive capability and we're all set to go
(Score: 1) by SuperCharlie on Sunday March 09 2014, @03:29AM
Moded Funny.. (at least atm) but this is the real problem.. that even if we find a habitable planet, the trip would probably be many generations away. Hell, we cant even get to Mars and back
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by isostatic on Sunday March 09 2014, @06:55AM
So Lister and Rimmer do, but The Cat doesn't?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @05:08AM
+1 for the reference.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @09:26PM
Does one of the planets have a moon shaped exactly like Felicity Kendal's bottom??