Space News thread

[Looper]

It is the next constellation north east of Orion. Orion is on the equator so everyone can see it.

Follow a line from Orion's feet (Rigel (blue/white - very bright magnitude 0)) through Orion's head (Betelguese (Red) very bright magnitude 0.5) and carry on in the same direction for 2 more times that distance and you get to Pollux (bright magnitude 1). Pollux is the head of one of the Gemini twins. The other head is the nearby Castor (quite bright - magnitude 2).

Castor is the source of the Geminids.

[palexxxx]

^ Thanks, I know you're trying to help, but I got lost at 'take a right turn at the first 7-11 you come to then ..... '

[harrybarracuda]

Astronomers discover closest potentially habitable planet: Wolf 1061c

BEC CREW 17 DEC 2015

The closest potentially habitable planet ever found has been spotted by Australian scientists, and it's just 14 light-years away. That’s 126 trillion kilometres from Earth, which sounds impossibly far, but when you consider that our closest planetary neighbour, Mars, is 249 million km away, that handful of light-years doesn’t seem so bad in the scheme of things.

Named Wolf 1061c, the newly discovered planet is located in the constellation Ophiucus, and its star is the 35th closest star from Earth - that we know about. The team behind the discovery says it's orbiting a red dwarf 'M-type' star called Wolf 1061, alongside two other planets. All three are suspected to be rocky like Mars, rather than gaseous like Neptune.

"It is a particularly exciting find because all three planets are of low enough mass to be potentially rocky and have a solid surface," said lead researcher Duncan Wright, an astronomer at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). "The middle planet, Wolf 1061c, sits within the 'Goldilocks zone' where it might be possible for liquid water - and maybe even life - to exist."

Of the three planets, the one orbiting closest to Wolf 1061 would be far too hot for life, and the furthest away one is very likely too cold. But the one in the middle, Wolf 1061c, looks to be just right for life... potentially.

Not that that means Wolf 1061c is anything like Earth. It has a mass around 4.3 times that of our planet, and orbits its star every 18 days at a distance of around 10 percent Earth’s orbit of the Sun. In our Solar System, that would make Wolf 1061c far too hot for life, but the Wolf 1061 star is much cooler than our Sun, with surface temperatures of around 3,300 Kelvin. The surface of our Sun, on the other hand, regularly hits 5,800 Kelvin.

"This discovery is especially exciting because the star is extremely calm," Wright told Stuart Gary at ABC News. "Most red dwarfs are very active, giving out X-ray bursts and super flares, which spells doom for any life, given the habitable zone is so close into these stars."

He adds that this proximity to the star means that Wolf 1061c is likely to be 'tidally locked', which means one side will always be facing its star. "This changes the circumstances on the surface of the planet substantially," he told Marcus Strom at The Sydney Morning Herald. "You have one very hot side and one very cool side."

Wright and his team used atmospheric modelling to figure out that the heat from the hot side is likely circulating to the cold side due to very high winds that travel between them.

To find Wolf 1061c in the first place, the astronomers used data collected by the HARPS spectrograph at the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-metre telescope in Chile over the past decade. They applied the 'doppler wobble method' to identify the planets, which picks up on the signal changes caused by smaller objects like planets circulating larger objects like stars.

The team will continue investigating the Wolf 1061 trio, picking up on characteristics they can glean from how they transit in front of their star. "The close proximity of the planets around Wolf 1061 means there is a good chance these planets may pass across the face of the star," one of the researchers, Rob Wittenmyer, told Strom. "If they do, then it may be possible to study the atmospheres of these planets in future to see whether they would be conducive to life."

The discovery will be published in an upcoming editon of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

[Takeovers]

Who needs a planet to live on?

Before we are capable of interstellar travel we will have mastered building habitats in space. I think we will travel in such a habitat for hundreds of years and will just build new and bigger habitats in the oort cloud of the destination star. Every star will have one, I am sure. Going to stars with habitable planets is so SF of the 30ies to 60ies of the last century.

[Sumbitch]

I'm not one to be optimistic that humanity will survive long enough to get out of the solar system on a manned star mission. Or does your idea even require that prerequisite?

[jamescollister]

I'm not one to be optimistic that humanity will survive long enough to get out of the solar system on a manned star mission. Or does your idea even require that prerequisite?

Inclined to agree, manned interstellar travel is a long way off, in theory possible, but technology wise, not likely for a long long time.

Priority should be getting off this rock and building orbital cities, not just earth orbits, but solar orbits. Once one big enough, is constructed, new ones can be built from material off world, moon, comets, then move further out.

Orbital cities are not hostile environments, like planets, if you lose one the others will carry on.

Believe there has been 5 extinction level events on earth and we are due for one sooner or later. If we haven't got off the planet in numbers, we will go the way of the dinosaurs.

[Luigi]

More likely we'll be controlling and manipulating Space-Time for interstellar travel before we'll be using conventional spacecrafts, unless there is an Earth changing catastrophe which forces our hand, or some sort of scientific hibernation anti-aging breakthrough coupled with an amazing propellant that shoots us safely along at the speed of light are developed.

[harrybarracuda]

You fuckers have great drugs, where do you get them?

[Sumbitch]

More likely we'll be controlling and manipulating Space-Time for interstellar travel before we'll be using conventional spacecrafts, unless there is an Earth changing catastrophe which forces our hand, or some sort of scientific hibernation anti-aging breakthrough coupled with an amazing propellant that shoots us safely along at the speed of light are developed.

Sounds like your glass is half full on that one.

[Takeovers]

You fuckers have great drugs, where do you get them?

Can't green you.

I think, one day we may be able to do interstellar travel. What we need at least is highly efficient aneutronic fusion as energy source. We may have that sooner than people think.

I do not believe in any kind of warp drive, warping space time and going faster than light. I would be pleasantly surprised if it happens though.

I do have a faint, very faint hope, that the em-drive will work. It would make interstellar travel much more easy and therefore likely.

It would go that way. First we settle Mars and learn how to maintain a completely closed ecologic circle, providing nutrients for plants, animals and humans. Next we build habitats in space. First in the Asteroid Belt, later out in the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. We could have that done in maybe less than 1000 years. Then we would load up such a habitat for a few thousand people with supplies and send it out on a journey of a few hundred years to a few thousand years at a speed of maybe 0,1% to 1% of lightspeed, . At the destination star there may be no planets* but surely there will be a Kuiper Belt or at least an Oort Cloud. Material enough to make more habitats and humans. Some settle around that star, and sooner or later a few habitats will spread out again to other stars.

* Note to future space tavellers. Avoid gravity wells, planets, like the plague. Easy to get trapped there, easy to get in and hard to get out. Stick with the easy places like asteroids.

[Luigi]

You fuckers have great drugs, where do you get them?

Don't forget that it will be AI making these breakthroughs, not us.

[Norton]

Before we are capable of interstellar travel we will have mastered building habitats in space

Sounds like Clark's Rendezvous with Rama.
Good read.

[Takeovers]

You fuckers have great drugs, where do you get them?

Don't forget that it will be AI making these breakthroughs, not us.

You did mention AI. That calls Elon Musk into the discussion.

http://www.wired.com/2015/12/elon-mu...ing-the-world/

Did you know that a group of computer people and a group of billionaires got together and founded a non profit AI research group just a few days ago? One of the two chairpersons is Elon Musk, probably because he feels he has not enough work heading SpaceX, Tesla and Solar City. The bilionaires pledged a billion $ funding. The computer specialists believe they can spend only a small fraction of that but Elon Musk believes this is only the beginning and will get much bigger. He is very vocal on AI being a potential threat if handled wrong.

[Looper]

There is no rush anyway.

We are likely to develop ways to control climate and renewable energy and water and food and population management long before we develop interstellar travel technology.

We will squeeze many 10s or 100s of millennia out of planet earth as we develop and refine the methods to make life sustainable here.

Even if some terrible apocalypse occurred (which is becoming vanishingly unlikely from a human source as global politics stabilises more each decade), as long as a minimal population survived, it would likely only be a few centuries at most before we were back up to speed and cutting the raw edge of science again; which is a small speed bump in the grand scale of things.

Getting a population on the moon might be a good mitigation against unforeseeable terrestrial disaster but as long as there is a small human population surviving somewhere our future as a species is virtually assured for a very long time into the future without any need for extra-terrestrial terra-forming.

[Sumbitch]

There is no rush anyway.

We are likely to develop ways to control climate and renewable energy and water and food and population management long before we develop interstellar travel technology.

We will squeeze many 10s or 100s of millennia out of planet earth as we develop and refine the methods to make life sustainable here.

Even if some terrible apocalypse occurred (which is becoming vanishingly unlikely from a human source as global politics stabilises more each decade), as long as a minimal population survived, it would likely only be a few centuries at most before we were back up to speed and cutting the raw edge of science again; which is a small speed bump in the grand scale of things.

Getting a population on the moon might be a good mitigation against unforeseeable terrestrial disaster but as long as there is a small human population surviving somewhere our future as a species is virtually assured for a very long time into the future without any need for extra-terrestrial terra-forming.

Point 1: you feel shows on Discovery showing the top 10 most likely ways to destroy life or most of it on earth is unlikely now that humans are here?

Point 2: you mention the survival of humanity. That's your only concern? If humans survived, maybe with a plant and animal source for food, that's good enough?

[Looper]

Point 1: you feel shows on Discovery showing the top 10 most likely ways to destroy life or most of it on earth is unlikely now that humans are here?

Human ingenuity is still in its technological infancy.

We will soon have ways of controlling all the environmental factors that need to be controlled in order to maintain Earth as a stable environment for human habitat for long long into the future.

Journeying to other planetary systems may not be required for 10s of millennia.

This may involve controlling the size of the human population for some time.

Point 2: you mention the survival of humanity. That's your only concern? If humans survived, maybe with a plant and animal source for food, that's good enough?

Homo Sapiens is the wonder of the universe as far as we know. Creatures that have evolved reflective self awareness and abstract thought and who can understand the nature and scale of the universe and who can engineer the tools needed to acquire this knowledge are the way that the universe understands itself.

We are the most important thing there is as far as we know.

The survival of the human race is the only thing that matters until we discover an alien species more intelligent than us who can understand the universe better. In which case we will be relegated to second most important thing in the universe.

[Luigi]

Point 1: you feel shows on Discovery showing the top 10 most likely ways to destroy life

Did it have big dramatic music, a baritone narrator, and spend 5 minutes recapping the previous 10 minutes, every 15 minutes?

[jamescollister]

We will soon have ways of controlling all the environmental factors that need to be controlled in order to maintain Earth as a stable environment for human habitat for long long into the future.

We may in time be able to control our environment, but ELE could occur outside of environmental problems.

It's a bad universe, after every ELE, that we know of, a new player took over, so to say if a few humans survived, they would come back as top dog, is not likely.

Earth has been life stable for a long time, but thinking apes are new to the scene, whether they can survive even a small ELE is a question.

A big event, massive solar flair, burning off the atmosphere, major impact starting 1,000s of year of a global ice age, we can't survive that.

We have to get out of here, or one day the place could look like Mars or Venus, as a species, we now have a window of opportunity.

We take it or we die, because the end will come and we don't know when.

[Looper]

We have to get out of here, or one day the place could look like Mars or Venus, as a species, we now have a window of opportunity.

We take it or we die, because the end will come and we don't know when.

A bit melodramatic there.

The 'window' of opportunity is very likely to be very long i.e. many 10s of millenia at least.

At the rate of innovation that the human race travels at we will be streets ahead of any disaster by the time it finally comes around.

1,000s of year of a global ice age, we can't survive that.

Ice ages are a piece of cake. We can easily survive an ice age with some minor tactical manoeuvring. Same goes for polar ice cap melts. Sea level goes up 70m. Who cares. It will be a major inconvenience no doubt but Homo Sapiens will stroll that sort of mole-hill hurdle.

We will have the technology to control climate soon anyway so no dramas either way.

[Takeovers]

The 'window' of opportunity is very likely to be very long i.e. many 10s of millenia at least.

It may be long, or it may not. Plenty of reasons we might lose our present level of technology and never regain it.

High on the list of losing it is religious nutters getting the upper hand. Don't look farther than the US bible belt. Though muslim extremism can do the trick as well. An epicemic eradicating 80% of the population of the world may do it as well. A super volcano outbreak, a major asteroid hit, a nuclear war. None of these will likely eradicate humanity from earth. But it may destroy our present level of technology and it is totally unclear if we can recover, given that we have exhausted most of the easily accessible sources of energy and mineral resources.

A society on Mars on the other hand cannot afford to let slip its level of technology because it would mean certain death. In some ways once established and spread out it would be more robust against disaster because there are many separate and encapsulated habitats.

[Looper]

The thing is these human causes (wars, epidemics, extreme terrorism) are not going to wipe out humankind. They may wipe out a lot of folk but like I said it would only be centuries at most (probably a lot sooner) before we were back up to speed.

What we need to worry about is something that could obliterate the species entirely such as asteroid strike or supervolcano. These would have to be much worse than the dinosaur strike as we are easily clever enough to survive something on that scale.

Remember we only need a small population to survive and repopulate. The hard won scientific knowledge of human history will still be available so the new population will already be standing on the shoulders of giants.

I think getting small off world populations on the moon and Mars would be a worthwhile contingency.

[Luigi]

Remember we only need a small population to survive and repopulate. The hard won scientific knowledge of human history will still be available

Not necessarily. I nthe words of a stand up, most people are dumb, around 99.9% of us. We have everything because of a tiny number of highly intelligent freaks. Don't believe me? Let me send you out into the woods with nothing but the clothes on your back. See how long it takes before you can send me an email.


But anyway. Somebody should start a Space News Thread.

[Looper]

The small surviving population will not be 'out in the woods'.

The gargantuan volume of scientific and engineering knowledge acquired by humans in the last 300 years will still be available in books and electronic data (once somebody figures out how to fire up a generator) so the new population will have a massive head start on rebooting civilisation as long as a large enough (but still tiny) fraction of the population survives this Armageddon.

Half of the technology will still work once a power source is hooked up.

[Sumbitch]

Human ingenuity is still in its technological infancy.

We will soon have ways of controlling all the environmental factors that need to be controlled in order to maintain Earth as a stable environment for human habitat for long long into the future.

Journeying to other planetary systems may not be required for 10s of millennia.

This may involve controlling the size of the human population for some time.

Homo Sapiens is the wonder of the universe as far as we know. Creatures that have evolved reflective self awareness and abstract thought and who can understand the nature and scale of the universe and who can engineer the tools needed to acquire this knowledge are the way that the universe understands itself.

We are the most important thing there is as far as we know.

The survival of the human race is the only thing that matters until we discover an alien species more intelligent than us who can understand the universe better. In which case we will be relegated to second most important thing in the universe.

Firstly, I congratulate you as another guy whose glass is half-full.

Secondly, I'm not going to argue all of the points you've made except one: if the human race is the most important thing we know of and it's survival is all that matters, why hasn't it even modestly exhibited any behavior, so far, that would lead one to disbelieve that the most important things we care about are sex, money and living the high life here on earth?

Did it have big dramatic music, a baritone narrator, and spend 5 minutes recapping the previous 10 minutes, every 15 minutes?

Yeah, as a matter of fact, it did.

A second-thought edit: the odds of any single species surviving are quite long. That is, over 99.9% of all species that ever existed are extinct, if you believe in that kind of thing.

Therefore, I would expend a good portion of our substantial resources on developing, creating, discovering (however you want to put it) multiple species of the genus Homo. That may sound like sci-fi but we should have thousands, 10s of thousands or even 100s of thousand years to get it done.

[Looper]

why hasn't it even modestly exhibited any behavior, so far, that would lead one to believe that the most important things we care about are sex, money and living the high life here on earth?s

What is wrong with caring about sex, money and living the high life?

Some measure of hedonism is not entirely incompatible with a tandem loftier quest for knowledge and understanding of the universe and our place in it.

We did evolve from monkeys remember.