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posted by
mattie_p
on Thursday February 27 2014, @10:31AM
from the I-bet-that's-all-of-them-now dept.
from the I-bet-that's-all-of-them-now dept.
kef writes:
"NASA's Kepler mission has doubled the number of known planets outside of our solar system. In what can only be described as a "bonanza", 715 new planets have been reported thanks to the Kepler space telescope's planet-hunting mission. Using a new method for verifying potential planets led to the volume of new discoveries from Kepler, which aims to help humans search for other worlds that may be like Earth."
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NASA Kepler Telescope Discovers 715 New Planets
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by Covalent on Thursday February 27 2014, @01:38PM
This is absolutely correct. What we should be doing is investing in two things:
1. Large, hi-resolution telescopes (probably in space) to examine these planets and give us a much better picture of what conditions are really like there.
2. Advanced propulsion - ion drives, solar sails, nuclear propulsion, etc. Our current propulsion technology is so primitive that there is no way we could build a probe that would last long enough to actually arrive at its destination (i.e. longer than the written history of our species). But a solar sail might be fast enough to make a probe at least possible.
2b. OK, we're going to need a way to communicate with that probe over light year distances. I'm sure there's more...
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.