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.

Read More...
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/09/29/5202633-alien-planet-looks-just-right-for-life

Wow and only 20 light years away? I wonder what that equates to in traveling time with todays technology..

wow, so if i start today on the speed of light, i'll be there in 20 years

does this place have wifi btw? can i take my laptop along?

oh yeah, data transfer latency would be like 20 years, ping and a response would take 20 years to arrive, and the computer won't bother to wait and will just say time out

finally, they may suck at technology tho

phil148 said:

Wow and only 20 light years away? I wonder what that equates to in traveling time with todays technology..

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20 years at the speed of light my brother

light travels 1⁄299,792,458 meters per second

1 mile = 1 609.344 meters




300000000/1610=186335 miles per second etc etc

= a long time

this sounds more like a well known movie ... STARGATE

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Can't wait to learn more! Keep us updated if you find something new

What i dont understand is why did it take so long to find this? We are just now finding this damn planet? lol

based on the report, it is a 220 years travel using our present rocket technology.

That's farrrrrrrrrr........

It takes 1 light year to get to our sun.

The UFO technology exists that can travel at the speed of light. You just don't know about it because its kept at secret.

millhugz said:

It takes 1 light year to get to our sun.

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if that were true this world would be barren.

it takes 8 light minutes to get to our sun...

millhugz said:

It takes 1 light year to get to our sun.

The UFO technology exists that can travel at the speed of light. You just don't know about it because its kept at secret.

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LOL! If it were one Light Year away....This conversing wouldn't be happening!

Now if we could only make a self-powered device to let a craft slowly gain speed.

Start out rocket fueld powered. Solar powered? Solar wind powered?

Maybe make a nuclear powered device to slowly release energy to have the craft gain speed?

phil148 said:

Wow and only 20 light years away? I wonder what that equates to in traveling time with todays technology..

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Yes . . . and imagine what the cab fare would be!

"Wiz"

I used to work at NASA as a space vehicle concepts engineer. The study researched 3 years ago here (http://arxiv.org/pdf/0705.3758) clearly says the planet is outside of the habitable zone. Although they believe life could exist on one of the moons as it could have a suitable size, atmosphere thats attractive to life qualities.

Also, it is located 200 light years away. In the article, the astronomer said if we could go 1/10th the speed of light. We don't even possess the capability to go 1% of the speed of light or any reasonable fraction of that! Outside of nuclear rocket technology, we possess no ability to get there in a reasonable time frame. Solar Sails are too slow and you have to remember that any change-in-velocity you use to get there you also have to use to slow down to get to that planet.

Will Starbucks wifi still work whilst I'm on route? o__O

'z-drive' is the way to go. Google it, enjoy hyperspace

WizGizmo said:

Yes . . . and imagine what the cab fare would be!

"Wiz"

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no prob! "uh, wait a moment while i run inside and grab my wallet..."

If we can see that far.. how come they haven't zoomed in on that planet to see if there is in fact some kind of life on it lol

Let's send all our politicians to that planet. All problems solved. Though they don't deserve it, I'll donate $0.50 for the cause.

We have known about this and other earth clones existing for a while now, it's cool to think that someday we will actually start to expand and leave our archetypal rock, venturing out into space. We just have to get rid of corruption, greed, hate, ego, learn to control our impulses and hardcore tap into our minds, fully understand consciousness pretty much.

Here's the thing about the possibly habitual planets, with our current understanding of physics (which no doubt has a long if even finite way to go), we would completely obliterate ourselves if we did find out a way to travel at the speed of light.

So now we get to talk logical speed of travel. I have no idea what that is and I'm mobile right now and not going to look it up but we'll just say it's 1000 years (piss poor estimate, go easy on me), we would have to build a machine to travel in which has a biologically compatible ecosystem to survive the ride, then teach our offspring everything we know and as generation after generation learns more and more it gets passed on and we eventually reach our destination.

So 1000 years later we're on this rock that's hopefully still habitual, now what? We're stuck in the same situation that were in on earth. There might be some type of life there to study, biological or otherwise, cool.

Or

Instead of spending all the time and effort to get there, we put the effort into building an indestructible-as-possible self-maintaining man made ecosystem "planet" and keep working towards technological and biological understanding. Once we get to the point of true intelligence technology (AI with the full capabilities of the human brain?) we can utilize it and essentially have computers working physics just like Stephen Hawking.

Then, once we get that far there is a very good chance we will be able to truly explore the vast majority (if there is such a thing) of the universe, because we will be able to move at light speed or faster with the intelligence minus the biological setbacks, like, well, death.

Well I hope that made sense, I'm so high and tired right now about to go to bed, just wanted to relay my idea of a self sustaining man-made planet, it's something I used to think about a lot when I was younger, nostalgia moment.
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