Earth's Corner of the Galaxy Just Got a Little Lonelier 224
Hugh Pickens writes "Only four stars, including Barnard's Star, are within six light-years of the Sun, and only 11 are within 10 light-years. That's why Barnard's star, popularized in Robert Forward's hard-SF novel Flight of the Dragonfly, is often short-listed as a target for humanity's first interstellar probe. Astronomers have long hoped to find a habitable planet around it, an alien Earth that might someday bear the boot prints of a future Neil Armstrong, or the tire tracks of a souped-up 25th-century Curiosity rover. But now Ross Anderson reports that a group of researchers led by UC Berkeley's Jieun Choi have delivered the fatal blow to those hopes when they revealed the results of 248 precise Doppler measurements that were designed to examine the star for wobbles indicative of planets around it. The measurements, taken over a period of 25 years, led to a depressing conclusion: 'the habitable zone around Barnard's star appears to be devoid of roughly Earth-mass planets or larger ... [p]revious claims of planets around the star by van de Kamp are strongly refuted.' NASA's Kepler space telescope, which studies a group of distant Milky Way stars, has found more than 2,000 exoplanet candidates in just the past two years, leading many to suspect that our galaxy is home to billions of planets, a sizable portion of which could be habitable. 'This non-detection of nearly Earth-mass planets around Barnard's Star is surely unfortunate, as its distance of only 1.8 parsecs would render any Earth-size planets valuable targets for imaging and spectroscopy, as well as compelling destinations for robotic probes by the end of the century.'"
But can it detect a space station? (Score:5, Funny)
Could be a local hangout.
It's Masters of Orion 2 all over again! (Score:5, Funny)
Now I'm seriously worried. Every time I played Masters of Orion 2 and I got situated in an area where the closest habitable planet was far away I always got my ass kicked by some civilization that was able to expand quickly. Our only hope is to start developing Deuterium fuel cells, and quickly!
Re:No planets around Barnard's Star? (Score:4, Funny)
It would be a lot easier to make an interstellar ship out of the moon. We just need to build a large base and then set of a huge nuclear explosion on the other side of it.
Re:We're running out of planets! (Score:2, Funny)
You say the 700C hellhole of burning sulphuric oceans is "a bit harder" to terraform?
That is a bit of an understatement.
Ob (Score:5, Funny)
What do you expect? This end of the Western spiral arm is somewhat unfashionable.
Creationists (Score:5, Funny)
Plus, the lack of existing planet means we get to create one, with our own design
I wish you damn creationists would stop posting here!
Re:Look at the bright side (Score:5, Funny)
I do hope they'll add fjords. They give a planet character.
Re:Alpha Centauri (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Look at the bright side (Score:5, Funny)
capable of artificial gravity,
You want some faster than light travel with that?
Or perhaps telekinesis?
Re:Look at the bright side (Score:5, Funny)
You want some faster than light travel with that?
Or perhaps telekinesis?
You read my mind!
Re:Look at the bright side (Score:5, Funny)
No thanks, I had some neutrinos for lunch, and boy did they go right through me!
Re:Look at the bright side (Score:5, Funny)
Come one, artificial gravity is easy. You use a simple quantum graviton emitter to pull gravitons from the gbrain and emit them in concentration creating an artificial gravity field.
Everyone knows that.... Wait, what year is it?
never mind.
Re:Alpha Centauri (Score:4, Funny)