A Third World May Be Orbiting Around Our Closest Neighboring Star (theverge.com) 34
Our nearest neighboring star, Proxima Centauri, may be harboring an extensive solar system, as scientists believe they've found a third planet orbiting it. From a report: It's a find that re-emphasizes just how commonplace planets outside our Solar System may be -- and it provides us with a third possible world nearby to study and potentially explore. Located a little more than 4 light-years from Earth, Proxima Centauri has long captured the imagination of scientists and sci-fi enthusiasts as a prime place to visit if we ever venture far outside our Solar System. The celestial object became even more intriguing in 2016 when astronomers found a planet orbiting around it. Called Proxima b, the planet is located in the star's habitable zone, where temperatures may be just right for water to pool on the surface. Just a few years later, a second planet, called Proxima c, was discovered around the star, too. With the discovery of this third likely exoplanet, called Proxima d, Proxima Centauri is possibly home to a wide array of worlds. While we do not have the means to travel to Proxima Centauri yet in any kind of reasonable time frame, these planets might be the first places we'd visit if we ever do develop such a capability. For now, their close proximity to Earth makes them prime candidates for follow-up study and observations. Astronomers say they could help us in our ever-evolving quest to understand how planets form around distant stars.
One quintillion years later... (Score:2)
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I haven't considered the star's motions in this, but
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at the speed NASA accomplishes anything, never. A corrupt, greedy, irresponsible and self-serving bureaucracy is incapable of any real progress except making themselves richer. NASA has lost its way; sadly it's a complete disgrace.
NASA funding and priorities are pretty much at the whim/mercy of the US Congress, which is where your sentence about a self-serving bureaucracy really kicks in. Then their own technical bureaucracy takes care of the rest of their problems.
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at the speed NASA accomplishes anything, never. A corrupt, greedy, irresponsible and self-serving beaurocracy is incapable of any real progress except making themselves richer. NASA has lost its way; sadly it's a complete disgrace.
Negativity without context tends to get moderated down. I wish it wasn't moderated down because the unfortunate truth is that this comment is 100% correct. I'll provide some context.
It is my assertion that NASA can be trusted with exactly nothing. How much of ALL of NASA's (and I'm going to use this word generously) "efforts" have been uttterly wasted? My direct interest with NASA started with the shuttle. Like most everyone else, I had a complete love affair with them in the 80s over the shuttle and Voy
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Really want to visit? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not sure we really want to go through all that effort to visit third world countries.
Could Webb see it? (Score:3)
I was thinking that maybe the Webb telescope would be able to image the planets but it seems unlikely.
Proxima d is "Located at less than a tenth the distance from Mercury to the Sun", and "Proxima b only takes 11 days on its orbit".
Re:Could Webb see it? (Score:4, Informative)
I was thinking that maybe the Webb telescope would be able to image the planets but it seems unlikely.
Webb can make useful observations of this system, but not image the planets. For that you need the New Worlds Mission [wikipedia.org] which is seeking 3 billion in funding. It uses an enormous (as coronagraphs go) "starshade" positioned at a great distance from the telescope.
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Even if the putative SS and it's optics package (whatever that vehicle were called - let's call it "SSO" for "SS Optics") aren't launched for several decades, the pointing challenges of a SS are such that you could considerably increase the "time on ta
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Proxima, Not Solar (Score:2)
"may be harboring an extensive solar system" - incorrect this time
"may be harboring an extensive star system" - good, correct always
"may be harboring an extensive proxima system" - correct this time
It's not hard. Our star's name is Sol. Stop naming all stars with our star's name. That kind of defeats the purpose of names. That's also why we have the term "star system", as the generic.
Re:Proxima, Not Solar (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup, I would. It's not being "an ass" to maintain a language. Making it completely impossible for anyone else to learn the language is being "an ass". So yes, "sol", "lunar", "terrestrial/terran", and "Earth" would be us. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't allow me to call mars, "earth".
You might grow martian potatoes in martian sand, martian dirt, and martian soil, but you would never allow me to grow martian potatoes in martian earth.
So is not putting your name to your opinion. This conversation isn't the kind that would get you imprisoned in your country, nor fired from your job. Without your name, you're effectively destroying any respect that your opinions might deserve.
Incidentally, I'll need to investigate your definition of "star system". I was under the impression that a star system needed to have at least one star, and something (anything) orbiting it. Whether that's a planet, a belt, or another star wouldn't matter.
As a side-note, regarding your astronomers, we're never talking about real-time conversational banter. We're also rarely talking about teaching young children. We're talking about in-writing publication here, or in official (i.e. rehearsed) communication. There's nothing wrong with good people making dumbass mistakes. N.A.S.A.'s not the first to screw up basic arithmetic math.
But when big people make small mistakes, they are most certainly still mistakes.
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but you would never allow me to grow martian potatoes in martian earth.
Yes, I would. As the english word soil, translates to German as "Erde" - which means "earth" (you might notice the similarity in the writing) Some german dialects call potatoes "earth apples", in German Erdaepfel.
So if some Germans build a base on Mars, obviously they will have a greenhouse. and they will plant their plants in that greenhouse in earth and not in "soil".
Your stupid nitpicking can only be because you are an avid SciFi watc
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Our star has no name. ... hm, I lost track.
In english it is Sun so it is called sun system like any other "solar system" - no one who is not a braindead SciFi nerd calls our system "Sol System". And most certainly not an astronomer.
In German it is Sonne so we call it Sonnen System like any other "solar system".
In Italian/Spanish/Portuguise/Frensh it is Sol - oh they call it Sol System", no idea why. Must be because
Your stupid rant makes no sense.
Every star system is a solar system - unless you find a "plane
I've seen Proxima (Score:2)
I've seen Proxima Centauri in a telescope. An otherwise-unremarkable dim star in a busy Milky Way field in Centaurus. Because it's so close to us and so far away from the rest of Alpha Centauri (a nice double in a telescope) it's a couple of degrees away in the sky too.
This was part of a personal challenge on an astronomy trip to Costa Rica. One night I located the farthest object I could reasonably see in a telescope (3C273). The next night, the closest.
...laura
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About 10th magnitude (colour dependent, obviously), so you'd have needed a decent scope - 150mm, or bigger?
If you happen to be looking in the right direction and you get SMS live alerts from LIGO/ Virgo/ or a Cerenkov observatory, you might be able to see some GRBs or other moderate-z events with the naked eye. But you might not have time to turn in the appropriate direction before it has cooled off.
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Reasonably decent: 8"/200mm Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain on a Losmandy G-11 mount. Hauling this through the airport in San Jose definitely attracted the attention of the Costa Rica Customs folks.
I had to play with the tripod legs to polar align at 9 degrees north. On an earlier trip I brough an SCT on a fork mount and one of the things I tried was putting it together upside down so the fork pointed at the south pole rather than the north. In effect, polar aligning for -9 degrees south rather than 9 degrees
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It would do. Did you keep the receipt/ bill of sale with it - hopefully showing that it's not new, and has travelled home before? Not that that is likely to be convincing if they decide to be suspicious.
I had a college friend who was returning home from ... somewhere tropical ; KL? Singapore?... where he'd been working for 8 months or so. While he was there, he had to buy a new laptop after his o
When the crypto bubble finally bursts (Score:1)
Now we know where we can ship off all the mining e-waste. Futurama was right [wikipedia.org] again!
Try Jah Love (Score:2)
I wonder what happened to them after that last hit they had 40 years ago...
fusion drive (Score:2)
If we had a working fusion drive, I wonder whether we could power a human-carrying ship fast enough to get to Alpha/ Proximi Centauri in the lifetime of the astronaut. Shielding would of course be an issue, but with a large enough fusion drive and a large enough fuel supply, it should be possible.
BTW, that's the gist of the novel The Sparrow; they use a hollowed-out asteroid and a fusion drive. A good read (also its sequel, Children of God).
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Breed (or indoctrinate) a human pilot that wouldn't mind going on a one-way trip (possibly bringing up and indoctrinating the next generation of pilot) for the benefit of the "folks back home".
Nah, just building a robot would be quicker and cheaper. You could test the prototypes By sending them to dwarf planet moon Charon, or Arrakoth, or somewhere interesting. Or even Sedna (when it's 10 times as far as P
in soviet helgium (Score:1)
Read The Friendly Paper (Score:2)
The header states "Astronomy & Astrophysics manuscript no. 42337corr", from which I infer that it has gone through peer review and is in technical editing and preparation for press.
Any important points or caveats - beyond those that it's a new result, and probably near the "bleeding edge"? They've done sub-set analysis on their data set, and get the result from sub-sets as well as the overall data set - a sel
only one with life though (Score:2)
That's because it doesn't happen on accident.