Kepler Spacecraft Finds System With Multiple Planets Transiting the Star 136
rhaas writes "NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered the first confirmed planetary system with more than one planet crossing in front of, or transiting, the same star. They found two planets almost the size of Saturn, and possibly a third, small, very hot planet with a radius about 1.5 times that of Earth."
Re:Exoplanets vs. inter-stellar travel (Score:5, Interesting)
Kepler is literally writing those first few galactic database entries for us. Some years from now, be it years, decades, or centuries, when our ancestors are poking around other solar systems, they are going to be pulling up a few scant words describing the likely surface composition and climate data of some of these planets. They will pull up the mass estimates and other numbers associated with each body before dropping onto the surface of the planet to update/verify the database. They will literally be using the information gathered by Kepler and its successors to give them some insight about what they are going to step into.
Does that register with anyone else? We are literally starting to compile a database on planets in other solar systems, so that one day explorers will have something, no matter how small, to refer to when stepping into the unknown. We are writing our own version of Mass Efffect's Codex. When that dawned on me today I almost crapped my pants. Sure folks, we joke about instant communication and flying robot overlords being signs that we literally are living in the future, but holy mother of crap, we have a spacecraft, on orbit, sending data down to us right now that is compiling data on systems that we hope to one day explore. That just makes my heart flutter to think about. Our infantile species, that leaped into orbit only half a century ago, can start to seriously consider studying, and maybe one day exploring, extra-system planets. Say what you will about how stupid and hopeless humans are, but I'll be damned if something like the Kepler mission doesn't make me gasp at how amazing a species we can be....
Re:Exoplanets vs. inter-stellar travel (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Exoplanets vs. inter-stellar travel (Score:5, Interesting)
People used to say that about the moon. "Escape velocity is impossible to reach!" they'd say. Escape velocity wasn't impossible. It was a puzzle to be solved. I prefer to look at Relativity and faster than light travel the same way. Maybe one day we'll solve those puzzles. I still have hope. I guess I'm an optimist.
Re:Exoplanets vs. inter-stellar travel (Score:4, Interesting)
Thing is: for vast, vast majority of "ELE" type events, it would be best to dig - to survive here on Earth (or rather "under" it). Because, except for very few, your typical ELE still doesn't make the Earth less hospitable (especially when saving as many humans as possible within achievable effort - don't be surprised with "think of the children" especially in such circumstances) in comparison to what's probably nearby.
Yes, a backup of sorts will be nice eventually - but this bonus won't be why we'll do it. Not with huge distances, not with physics of this Universe (we cannot assume some breakthrough, even if it would be very nice to have); almost dictating that colonization will be only via hops to nearest systems (and probably via autonomous embryo ships at that; barely any "full" living humans actually making the journey). Or even without much directed effort at all - just via spreading, over many millenia, also to Oort cloud of our system...which at some point makes "jumps" to Oort clouds of nearby systems relatively easy.
Re:Perspective (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, the most distant discovered is 20k light years away, and near the center of Mily Way to boot (so not really a case of local conditions; actually, the conditions might be better there, with higher metallicity); with a possible detection also in the Andromeda Galaxy and even in YGKOW G1, 3.7 billion light years away.
Re:Exoplanets vs. inter-stellar travel (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/technology/warp/scales.html [nasa.gov] Just an obligatory reference to the warp drive when: scales page to remind everyone just how far away even Alpha Centauri is. It turns out that the basic problem is one of fuel to accelerate us to a large enough fraction of c. The most practical choice seems to be an exceedingly large spacecraft built on Moonbase Alpha and ferried to the appropriate Lagrange Point Station manufacturing facility for further assembly. The only practical tech we have would be a scaled up version of Orion pulsed nuke propulsion. We would still need to build a very, very large ship, miles in length and then fill up almost the whole thing with hydrogen bombs. The conclusion on that page is that it is basically hopeless for any reasonable human timescale even if we could figure out a way to manufacture extremely large quantities of antimatter. An alcubierre type of drive that doesn't require fuel would be the only practical way. If such a drive were even theoretically possible it would give us a chance of visiting other star systems. As far as anyone can tell space drives are not possible and they never will be. I actually think we should give the Orion pulsed nuke idea another try.
Re:Exoplanets vs. inter-stellar travel (Score:3, Interesting)