Unlikely Planets Found In Violent Star Clusters 30
astroengine writes "When it comes to forming planets, Mother Nature isn't very picky. Despite horrific conditions inside densely packed open clusters, stars apparently have no problem forming and hanging on to an orbital brood. That's the conclusion from a new study (abstract) that used data collected by NASA's now-dormant Kepler space telescope to hunt for planets in a one-billion-year old open cluster called NGC 6811, a collection of about 70 stars located about 3,400 light years away in the constellation Cygnus."
Re:So. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So. (Score:5, Interesting)
This reminds me of some people in the past saying that a train would never exceed 30 miles per hour because the passengers would suffocate.
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We will never travel faster than the speed of light. That, however, does not mean we can not reach distant star systems. It will simply be a very, very, long trip.
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So the real challenge is improving in-flight catering.
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There are some theoretical travel models which don't necessarily involve going the whole distance.
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Well then again, people called bullshit on trains, planes and so on.
It is mathematically possible to travel faster than light (e.g. using an Alcubierre drive using the power harnessed by the Casimir effect). It's not physically possible now? True. Time will tell though. I wouldn't completely abandon all hope just yet.
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We will never travel faster than the speed of light. That, however, does not mean we can not reach distant star systems. It will simply be a very, very, long trip.
A very, very long trip of a few thousand years at least (not to mention the 3000 years TSA will add to the pre-boarding).
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We will never travel faster than the speed of light. That, however, does not mean we can not reach distant star systems. It will simply be a very, very, long trip.
That depends. There are theories that show that "warp travel" of varying definitions may be possible. I recall one in which maintaining a stable "warp bubble" for what is effectively faster than light travel was feasible. The problem is getting into the bubble itself, which required enormous energy - far more than maintaining it or traveling in it. There are other theories and studies under way. And given that there is still a lot of physics we don't understand (dark energy, dark matter, unification of
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Feh. If light speed is too slow, we just need to increase the speed of light.
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Anything that could reach us would kill or enslave us if they are anything at all like us.
Even we aren't like us. Not every culture is as incompetently bent on domination as the anglosphere. The Romans now, there was a group who knew how to hold an empire together. Their philosophy wasn't the laughable 'if they're fighting one another at least they aren't fighting us', but rather to make conquered nations semi-equals, citizens if they so chose.
Anyway and on topic, there's no particular reason why we won't defeat age related mortality before too long. It's not physically impossible to live for mi
Re:So. (Score:5, Insightful)
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If the actual concern is to increase science and technology spending, then you should specifically advocate that when contacting your congressional representative. That would be much more helpful than simply advocating against spending money on war as that gives no guidance on your preference as to what to do with the unencumbered funds (refund? pay off debt? repurpose?).
The primary expenditure for the US government is that same as Europe - social welfare spending. In the US, social welfare spending in
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Yes Nerds care and last time I checked this site is *supposed* to be "News for Nerds".
Check again. No seriously, do check... can you find it NOW?
I would like to be so, but it seems that senility (lost of common functions) comes with age faster for web sites than for humans
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When I load slashdot.org, the window title is "Slashdot:News for nerds, stuff that matters - Mozilla Firefox. Hovering over the tab gives a similar title minus the Mozilla Firefox and the window list also gives a similar title with Firefox as the prefix.
Perhaps it depends on the browser
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When I load slashdot.org, the window title is "Slashdot:News for nerds, stuff that matters - Mozilla Firefox. Hovering over the tab gives a similar title minus the Mozilla Firefox and the window list also gives a similar title with Firefox as the prefix.
Perhaps it depends on the browser
It seems that it does depend on the browser: on CentOS Chrome doesn't display it, Firefox does.
Seems that I either I have to hand over the nerd card or change the browser.
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View source -> Line 278.
<link rel="top" title="News for nerds, stuff that matters" href="//slashdot.org/" >
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Does anyone actually care about these other planets besides the folks who are trying to get more grant money from the tax paying middle class?
Yes, and there are a lot of reasons for this. Before I get to them, let me quickly note that the entire US budget on all research as a percent of GDP is generally around 3% http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/guitotal.shtml [aaas.org], and space research fraction of that. The NASA budget is slightly less than a half of 1% of the federal budget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA [wikipedia.org], and only a small fraction of that is devoted to planet searching. The cost of Kepler for its entire life is around 600 million dollars http: [wikipedia.org]
So you are saying you don't know shit about space? (Score:2)
And here we thought we know it all.
I find it funny, but if you can find that planets can survive in extreme conditions, how the hell can you not think that life can't also? This always reminds me how the experts are experts on nothing, because we really know nothing about the universe.
But hey, let's spend more money then all the combined totals of the income of all 3rd world nations (totally making that figure up, too lazy to check) on killing people instead of advancing human knowledge.
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The question isn't so much can life survive in those conditions, as can it originate in those conditions. When a change comes on slowly enough simple life can survive in truely incredible conditions...but could it originate in them?
Of course, answering this question is made more difficult, because we don't know what conditions life originated in even on Earth. We've got lots of reasonable guessses, and perhaps more than one of them is correct (though only one origin left survivors).
Globular clusters (Score:5, Informative)
So far, the only place where planets haven’t been found yet is in globular clusters, an environment even more extreme that open clusters like NCG [sic!] 6811.
Aren't globular clusters very old? And, consequently, not very metallic? The lack of planets in them can hardly come as a surprise.
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Fascinating Summary (Score:3)
post unrelated (Score:1)