NASA Confirms 5,000 Exoplanets (cnet.com) 58
NASA JPL announced a cosmic milestone with the confirmed discovery of over 5,000 exoplanets (planets located outside our solar system). CNET reports: A new batch of 65 planets joined the NASA Exoplanet Archive on Monday, triggering a celebratory mood. "It's not just a number," Exoplanet Archive science lead Jessie Christiansen said in a statement. "Each one of them is a new world, a brand new planet. I get excited about every one because we don't know anything about them."
The first exoplanets were confirmed in the early 1990s, which means we've set an impressive pace for discovery. NASA announced the planet count had hit 4,000 in June 2019 and it took less than three years to add another thousand to that haul. [...] We haven't definitively found an Earth clone yet, but the exoplanets spotted so far range from rocky worlds like ours to jumbo gas giants bigger than Jupiter. While 5,000 is an impressive number, it's just a tiny sliver of what's out there. Said NASA, "We do know this: Our galaxy likely holds hundreds of billions of such planets."
The first exoplanets were confirmed in the early 1990s, which means we've set an impressive pace for discovery. NASA announced the planet count had hit 4,000 in June 2019 and it took less than three years to add another thousand to that haul. [...] We haven't definitively found an Earth clone yet, but the exoplanets spotted so far range from rocky worlds like ours to jumbo gas giants bigger than Jupiter. While 5,000 is an impressive number, it's just a tiny sliver of what's out there. Said NASA, "We do know this: Our galaxy likely holds hundreds of billions of such planets."
Drake equation (Score:2)
This helps us fill in one of the unknown variables in the Drake Equation [wikipedia.org].
But the big question still remains: "Where is everybody?"
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They're hiding from everyone or destroying others before they are destroyed.
Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to detonate nukes that generate EM pulses so many orders of magnitude more than any other radio signals they reach 50k volts per meter or even higher over large areas. . Not only are they the loudest and easiest to detect human emissions, they signal our intent to destroy stuff.
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But the big question still remains: "Where is everybody?"
Everybody is some time else. I don't know why people can't seem to grasp that sentient beings are separated by both space and time. There also might be plenty of evidence of life elsewhere and elsewhen but it's not stupidly large machines. A planet is the optimal machine for habitation which is why we don't expect life to evolve on an asteroid. Making stuff the size of a star is just stupid when you can just make your own star using fusion.
If anything, we have found significant evidence that either mega
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If anything, we have found significant evidence that either megastructures are pointless or that they are prone to breaking down and being destroyed.
The only megastructure that I see being possible is a Dyson swarm or cloud. I just don't see a sphere or a ring as being possible. The stress on the rotational parts alone would be enough to tear it to pieces.
But a Dyson cloud, if you can call that a megastucture, is nothing more than reasonable size objects placed in orbits, and lots of them. I'm also not sure how we would detect such a structure with out confusing it for dust.
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This actually mirrors one of the thoughts I have on the Fermi paradox. We are the first ones or one of the first ones to reach this level of development. This explanation seems just as reasonable as some of the others that try to explain it.
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The problem with "great filter" explanations for "no aliens" is that it has to be inescapable - it must apply universally or even one civilization escaping through it will colonize the galaxy. So neither "nuclear war" or "bad nanotech" can do the job since only one society has to choose to circumvent them. Once one replicating ship leaves the home world no calamity that destroys that world can harm it.
This is the problem with nearly all "solutions" offered to the Fermi Paradox - they might apply in some sub
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Someone hinted at the other filter, one that I've been talking about for decades, and seem to be ignored: any aliens MUST be at least no more than 100 years behind our current tech or 150 years past it.
Anything less, and they're not communicating. Anything more, and however they communicate is so far beyond us that we haven't come near developing it.
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Another, similar possibility is that they just become very energy efficient. They develop immersive video games and virtual worlds and end up plugged into those and never go anywhere or do anything real.
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The problem with "great filter" explanations for "no aliens" is that it has to be inescapable - it must apply universally or even one civilization escaping through it will colonize the galaxy.
When I get all worked up about the Fermi Paradox, I like to think about hikes I've taken in the woods and times I've come across clearings with no trees, etc. No-one cut them down or anything, there are just areas where the trees didn't grow or are sparse. I don't know exactly why, but I can see places trees grew, and places they didn't. I just find that sort of reassuring.
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My thought is that any races advanced enough to communicate between star systems do so using physics unknown to us at present.
One idea: Tesla and others have spoken about longitudinal (ie compression) electromagnetic waves.
We are used to working with transverse emf waves. yet in every medium we know of, energy can be transmitted via both compression waves (eg sound in water/air) or transverse (surface) waves. The latter are always slower and hugely inefficient compared to the former.
So if light as we kno
Re: Drake equation (Score:2)
Unless we have some physics pretty badly wrong (which is possible) there won't be any way to communicate faster than light.
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my contention is that we do have physics quite badly wrong. Or put another way, at no point in history have we ever had physics "completely right", or else we would already understand how everything works, and any clear thinker will see we are very far from that, and always have been. Thus, everything in terms of theory is fair game to be challenged. nothing is sacred.
With regards to "the speed of light".... well, we already know that the speed changes based on the medium it travels in, like any othe
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Or put another way, at no point in history have we ever had physics "completely right",
There's a long distance between completely right and badly wrong.
So why should light be any different?
For one thing, it is not traveling through matter at all. The medium is spacetime itself. So the question is, why should we expect that to behave the same way as matter? As for why we think the speed of light is an absolute limit, that's a bit much to get into in a /. comment but there are a lot of resources to look into it if you're interested.
and there is every reason to believe that a longitudinal wave should travel much, much faster and much much further than a transverse wave.
Such as what reasons?
These might even be related to what have been called "gravity waves" and/or "quantum entanglement".
Gravity waves travel at the speed of light, and quantum entanglement cannot
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wow, your statements seem to imply that I'm not already familiar with the dogma that has been taught for decades. If you can't get your head out of that paradigm, this discussion is pointless.
regurgitated dogma. what is "spacetime itself"? how about you take 30 minutes to think about the actual physical reality of it? Is it dense? Is it sparse? if sparse, what exists in between the sparce particles? nothing? how can nothing exist? if not sparse, is it dense?
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So don't bother trying to "educate" me about them please.
No problem, I won't. You could have saved us both some time by just mentioning you're not interested in science.
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dogma is not science.
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Agreed. And neither is whatever you're talking about.
Re: Drake equation (Score:1)
Waiting for us to build a Dyson Sphere, then all the messages will start pouring in.
Yes, but... (Score:1)
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Just as soon as science manages to extend my current lifespan from a lousy current 96 years to a reasonable two or three hundred thousand years, I will start saving up to buy a ticket to Alpha Centauri which is local enough to make the trip worthwhile.
I hope you realize that living that long will require you to live in a bunker the whole time and do nothing at all hazardous, ever. People living normal lives are exposed to risks that limit the average lifetime to about 1500 years. The reduction in risk factors would have to be by a factor of 200, resulting in quite a spartan life (though you could just live in the Matrix I suppose).
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Re: Yes, but... (Score:2)
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We can finish destroying this one
Let me guess, you are one of these narrow minded individuals that thinks we should spend what meager resources we spend on space exploration, we should spend some environmental program. Someone who is so short sighted they don't see what benefits cheap space travel will do for environmental problems.
Am I right there Spanky, or close to the ballpark?
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Someone who is so short sighted they don't see
what benefits cheap space travel will do for environmental
problems.
So let's hear it: just exactly how will cheap space travel
solve our enviornment problems?
Or are you someone who makes bald assertions whithout
even attempting to justify them?
Hey Spanky?
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Well, first of all this conversation has nothing to do with you, now does it? Probably, it would be for the best if you sat in your corner and wait for some one to pull your string. But lets answer your question.
Lets start with the obvious, mining and resource extraction. For every element or mineral we have to rip out of our planets crust there is a thousand times more available in the asteroids that we know about.
Lithium, comes to mind right from the start. Sure, research estimates there is more
Who cares? (Score:2)
The science community already had a notion that there were plenty of exoplanets orbiting the many stars we know exist in our galaxy. Its not going to be meaningful if in 2-5 more years, when they catalog 10x the current number of exoplanets.
What's pathetic is that we already know of exoplanets orbiting the closest known stars to our solar system. The Proximas are barely 4 light years away. But we're not even working on a means to send a probe that would get to explore the next star and its exoplanet in a
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I agree that the "5,000 exoplanets milestone" seems pretty arbitrary. There are lots of them, we already knew that.
About the exploration though, work actually is being done to figure out how to send interstellar probes. Some day we might come up with a way to do it that is feasible.
https://www.space.com/29950-la... [space.com]
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About the exploration though, work actually is being done to figure out how to send interstellar probes.
We're not even pursuing technologies like electromagnetic sails. That, along with ionic propulsion systems, would make sending probes to the Oort cloud within a ten year period plausible, and we have the technology now. It only requires actual investment in working models. (Plus, those technologies would significantly shorten transit time to Mars. Instead, we're blowing NASA money to go back to the Moon again.)
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About the exploration though, work actually is being done to figure out how to send interstellar probes.
We're not even pursuing technologies like electromagnetic sails. That, along with ionic propulsion systems, would make sending probes to the Oort cloud within a ten year period plausible, and we have the technology now. It only requires actual investment in working models. (Plus, those technologies would significantly shorten transit time to Mars. Instead, we're blowing NASA money to go back to the Moon again.)
Getting there is only half the mission. When our probes reach other solar systems (or galaxies), they need a way to reliably send data back to earth.
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When our probes reach other solar systems (or galaxies), they need a way to reliably send data back to earth.
Data findings can still be communicated to our Voyager probes that have passed the heliopause. Yes, we will probably need to devise ways to communicate at light year distances, but we probably can get by with what we know now to "explore" objects in the Oort cloud. But we can't get there, because we're not advancing the engineering of technologies to get there. We're wasting time revisiting the Moon instead.
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The point of space exploration is to enable us to go there, and the only way to learn how to actually do that is to **go do it**. The moon is close enough to be supplied from Earth and to minimize communications issues, and has enough gravity to make plumbing and ventilation function in a manner we expect, but the environment is still foreign enough to give us training in how to live off-world. Once you're on the moon you're 90% of the way to the asteroids.
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Making the actual travel easy enough makes the communication easier, because we can send out a whole series of probes that relay messages back to Earth.
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You're missing the point. The point is that with announcements like this, awareness grows within the broader community who, in turn, vote for people who are (marginally, yes) more likely to increase NASA funding and support crazy ideas like deep space exploration.
Say what you will, 5000 exoplanets is something to celebrate as an achievement. If the PR folks at NASA can make hay out of it, we should be on board.
I mean discovering exoplanets at this point is cheap: a little telescope time, a little compute
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Say what you will, 5000 exoplanets is something to celebrate as an achievement. If the PR folks at NASA can make hay out of it, we should be on board.
Funny, I just look at this dross as B.S. project managers exultation in minor achievement in order to justify further money towards scientific masturbation. The research is not at the level of the Ig Noble prizes, but it pretty much only one step above it. We like to send out a significant science probe missions every ten years; I don't see why we can't be doing EM sail engineering now to propel the next deep space probe.
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I don't see why we can't be doing EM sail
engineering now to propel the next deep space probe.
Maybe there are other, more practical problems to deal
with, like building a Mars colony.
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The reason we **don't** (it's not **can't**) is because Congress is made up of a herd of useless lawyers who are terrified of the Pentagon. I suppose it's a valid fear, since the generals have access to unlimited weapons and fanatics, but it does none of us any good. We went to the moon with a maximum of 4.5% of federal budget, historically the military sucks down 45-55% of the budget every year. Last year's Pentagon budget (not counting the Black Budget, the intel agencies, mercenaries, etc.) was more t
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I don't know where in the past you situate the "had" but i have had the privilege of going to a small conference by Michel Mayor, the co-discoverer of the first exoplanet 51 Pegasi b. To my surprise, he said before the discovery most astrophysicists thought exoplanet would be very rare. And the few extrasolar systems would be very similar to ours.
Voyager 2 took 41 years to quit the heliosphere at 122 astronomical units. New horizons 9 years to reach Pluto. Proxima Centuri is way out of our current league.
I
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but i have had the privilege of going to a small conference by Michel Mayor, the co-discoverer of the first exoplanet 51 Pegasi b.
Its not my problem that the field changes its consensus quicker than your ability to score exclusive conference invitations. I'm also sure he probably meant it would be hard to find exoplanets because there would be so little available resources to search for them at the time.
Voyager 2 took 41 years to quit the heliosphere at 122 astronomical units.
It wasn't Voyager 2's original mission design to investigate the heliosphere. It was merely a possibility that allowed for the renewal of funding every 10 years to keep the program alive.
New horizons 9 years to reach Pluto.
On chemical rockets having to travel across th
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A working combination of electromagnetic sail and ionic
propulsion could accelerate a probe to the point it could hit a KBO
Key word being "working" when nothing like this is even
on the horizon.
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
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The three criteria of the IAU for a full-sized planet are:
1. It is in orbit around the Sun. (this we know)
2. It has sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium (a nearly round shape). (this we know)
3. It has “cleared the neighborhood” around its orbit. (this could be a little uncertain)
But dwarf exoplanet is still an exoplanet and some of these are bigger than Earth, so I don't care much about IAU definition.
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I thought that another reason was because Charon is so big relative to Pluto and that they actually orbit a common center in space between them. Therefore it was very hard to tell if previous observations of Pluto were actually observations of Charon, etc. That is also something we may not know about many of these exoplanets. Some of them may actually be more than one body.
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We're not even working to send a probe to examine the largest KBOs in the Oort cloud.
That would cost 10's of billions of dollars.
Can we put that on your credit cards?
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If we charge it to the Joint Chiefs rather than NASA they wouldn't even notice.
And that... (Score:1)