Alpha Centauri Has an Earth-Sized Planet 152
The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers have announced that the nearest star system in the sky — Alpha Centauri — has an Earth-sized planet orbiting one of its stars. Alpha Cen is technically a three-star system: a binary composed of two stars very much like the Sun, orbited by a third, a red dwarf, much farther out. Using the Doppler technique (looking for very small changes in the velocities of the stars) astronomers detected a planet orbiting the smaller of the two stars in the binary, Alpha Centauri B. The planet has a mass only 1.13 times that of the Earth, making it one of the smallest yet detected.However, it orbits the star only 6 million kilometers out, so it's far too hot to be habitable. The signal from the planet is extremely weak but solidly detected (PDF), giving astronomers even greater hope of being able to find an Earth-like planet orbiting a star in its habitable zone."
Re:I'd leave well enough alone! (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is this modded down? Stephen Hawking [neatorama.com] would agree.
Re:Uh oh... (Score:3, Insightful)
lol, anonymous thinks the universe is twice as big as the solar system.
Man will never fly, and only a fool would think it possible to walk on the moon.
Re:Uh oh... (Score:2, Insightful)
That's the thing with all your "man will never fly" quotes. Someone BUILT a machine, using real materials, real energy sources and real engineering with a few YEARS.
Since the moon shots, the space loon brigade has had DECADES to show us something, ANYTHING, that manned space makes a shred of sense.
That's the thing. You think that because someone was wrong, you think anyone who predicts a negative outcome is wrong. But you skip the tiny little detail of you know, BUILDING what it is you claim is possible.
By your logic, any prediction that sounds wrong to you, for whatever reason, can be discarded.
Man will never extend his lifespan.
Re:I'd leave well enough alone! (Score:2, Insightful)
If somehow we "made contact" with some "ET" type, and they had the means to get here "quickly", you think they would come
in friendship? LOL, probably blow us up like the Klingons, Borg or some other crap. Just leave things alone will ya?
That's what the television and movies tell you, don't they? Do you ever wonder why most of them tell that ETs are here to attack us ?
To keep us in Fear and to believe that if someone would come here, this would be automatically justify a reason for us to attack them.
Think about how the US & Hollywood portrays terrorists in movies, TV -series and mainstream news. Same thing with Extraterrestrial Life.
Oh, and btw. Imagine, that if there are civilizations out there who are _exponentially_ more evolved, have the capability to understand 100,000,000 times more of every aspect of technology and life, why would they travel here slowly ? They would have most probably already mastered Quantum Teleportation and other technologies we are still dabbling around with, and therefore would already know how to transfer themselves physically to our realms if needed.
And if a lifeform has gained such high insights into life itself, it would have already meant that they had gone through the phase of understanding that killing themselves and others is not the way. So why would such a race attack us ?
And now, if there is a race that wants us as their slaves, wouldn't they just infiltrate themselves into our society instead of attacking directly? What's the point of just killing everyone and taking the planet ? Any race that could come from such far distances would have to technologically and socially so much more advanced, they must have thought about more advanced tactics also.
And maybe this has already happened, and we are living in such a society where we are slaves to some certain bloodlines who are in contact with these beings .. think about kings & queens, why are always the same f*ckers in control and most of the society feels like slaves to them ? Think about this possibility.
Oh yeah, and one more thing, we already are in contact with ETs and Aliens, and have been for so long time already. Our society has suppressed this information for so long to keep us blinded from the truth. The communication happens telepathically and during meditative states of mind, or during dreams. Research the subject, the information is out there.