First Earthlike Exoplanet Found

[Agent Miles]

The Drake equation states that:
N=R*x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L
where:
N is the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which we might expect to be able to communicate at any given time
and
R* is the rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp is the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne is average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fl is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life
fi is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc is the fraction of the above that are willing and able to communicate
L is the expected lifetime of such a civilization for the period that it can communicate across interstellar space.

This discovery helps fine tune the third variable. There could be exotic life on lots of planets and moons, even on the surface of cool brown dwarf stars. However, Drake made the conservative argument that we know there is life on Earth, so how many Earth-like planets might there be in the galaxy? Some of the other variables can be estimated to get just about any result you want.

P.S. Rameus-You’re right, except that your ship accelerated past the speed of light! (approximately 300,000,000 m/second) The ramjet design requires a ship that is miles long with a scoop several miles wide. However, you could go anywhere in the universe in your lifetime (the rest of the universe would age billions of years).

[Vladimir]

Horetore is quite right and some have theorized that life forms on another planet could be based off of silicone instead of carbon creating some very wierd looking creatures

Fat chance.

[Rameusb5]

P.S. Rameus-You’re right, except that your ship accelerated past the speed of light! (approximately 300,000,000 m/second) The ramjet design requires a ship that is miles long with a scoop several miles wide. However, you could go anywhere in the universe in your lifetime (the rest of the universe would age billions of years).

I've never been able to get my head around FTL travel, but from my (extremely n00bish) understanding, the passengers of the ship would be able to go that fast just fine.

It would just appear (to observers) to take forever to do so to observers.

I've always been rather annoyed that the laws of physics that I have grown so accustomed to totally break down on the extreme ends of reality (the very fast and the very small).

[Soulforged]

Very good news Lemur. Probably I won't see this planet ever... That's until I've finished my elixir or youth of course...

Anyway, the human always finds a way through dreams and hopes, in this news expands our limits in this world probably beyond actual paradigms.

[doc_bean]

Not that I'm an expert (physicists and expert please correct me if I'm wrong)...

I've never been able to get my head around FTL travel, but from my (extremely n00bish) understanding, the passengers of the ship would be able to go that fast just fine.

Reaching that speed would be extremely hard I think. There's a reason light is massless, I don't think that anything with a mass could reach that speed. I think it's an asymptotic speed, it would take more energy to achieve the same acceleration closer to light speed. (I may be completely wrong here).

It would just appear (to observers) to take forever to do so to observers.

Well, we do see light from distant stars, so it can't take forever for an outside observer, otherwise we'd never see anything that travels at light speed.

[Ironside]

Well, we do see light from distant stars, so it can't take forever for an outside observer, otherwise we'd never see anything that travels at light speed.

For the observers, the speed is easy to handle, 99% of the light speed means 99 light years in 100 years, while it's a much shorter time on board the space ship.
But as 99 light years is nothing in the universe... Traveling to the Andromeda galaxy for example, 2,5 million years...

[Husar]

There's a reason light is massless, I don't think that anything with a mass could reach that speed.

IIRC black holes drag light into them, black holes have a whole lot of gravitational pull and gravitation affects mass, thus light would not be massless. IIRC light is more like mass converted to energy, because mass and energy are roughly the same etc. pp. never really understood that completely myself.

[Ironside]

IIRC black holes drag light into them, black holes have a whole lot of gravitational pull and gravitation affects mass, thus light would not be massless. IIRC light is more like mass converted to energy, because mass and energy are roughly the same etc. pp. never really understood that completely myself.

No, no, no light only got momentum, that makes it act like it actually had mass, because if light had mass, the photons would gain unlimited mass and would instantly collaps into black holes and instantly create the big crunch (giant black hole that contains the whole mass of the universe).

Things start to get very complicated around there, probably due to imcomplete theories.

[The_Mark]

Hehe.

Reaching that speed would be extremely hard I think. There's a reason light is massless, I don't think that anything with a mass could reach that speed. I think it's an asymptotic speed, it would take more energy to achieve the same acceleration closer to light speed.

Yes. When an object accelerates its mass grows without limits, and accelerating the object will therefore take more and more energy. With ridiculous amounts of energy we could accelerate an object ridiculously close to the speed of light, but actually reaching c would take infinite energy, and since the mass increases the accelerated object would collapse into a black hole at some point. Not to mention that our ridiculously fast and therefore heavy object could scoop up some objects en route in its gravitational pull. Now, I wouldn't want a bleedin' planet tailing me when I'm about to decelerate.

[Lorenzo_H]

I have been watching DVDs on Aliens and stuff and its very possible that they do exist. I won't bother going into details unless someone asks me.

[Louis VI the Fat]

IIRC light is more like mass converted to energy, because mass and energy are roughly the same etc. pp. never really understood that completely myself.

I'm not really sure about that myself. But lately I've been pondering about this subject quite a bit, and I've come up with this...equation - if it deserves that name. I have this feeling, and it's a hunch more than anything else so please don't laugh, but perhaps energy could be equated with mass times the speed of light squared? What do you guys think?

Oh, and since this planet is discovered by a team of French astronomers, with the odd Swiss French thrown in, I naturally demand that all communications with any posible aliens be conducted in French.
Gah! So we couldn't get you earthlings to submit to our linguistic demands, eh? We'll just teach the aliens then. While you lot are still wasting your time discussing robot poodles, rabbits and Drake's equation, we are transmitting signals to Gliese and are well on our way to turning the universe francophone.

[Vladimir]

I love the Science channel!

I was had it on after I got back form work and I believe some goofy looking Frenchman was the first one to discover a planet around another star, a hot Jupiter.

[Divinus Arma]

Two thoughts:

(a) Cool!

(b) Rather than working on a faster means of travel, why not work instead, or simultaneously, on a means of extending life. 200 Years of travel is more tolerable if one lives to be 300 or more. With genetics controlling the aging process, it seems we are far closer to this than the former.

[Papewaio]

Oh, and since this planet is discovered by a team of French astronomers, with the odd Swiss French thrown in, I naturally demand that all communications with any posible aliens be conducted in French.
Gah! So we couldn't get you earthlings to submit to our linguistic demands, eh? We'll just teach the aliens then. While you lot are still wasting your time discussing robot poodles, rabbits and Drake's equation, we are transmitting signals to Gliese and are well on our way to turning the universe francophone.

Well then the most appropriate phrase given pop culture and the language chosen would have to be:

"We welcome our new Alien Overlords."

[Husar]

I have this feeling, and it's a hunch more than anything else so please don't laugh, but perhaps energy could be equated with mass times the speed of light squared? What do you guys think?

That sounds nice, but it can only be wrong if light has no mass, then it's mass would be zero, and you'd end up with it's energy = 0*c² = 0, but IIRC light does have energy, think of laserbeams and sunburns.

[Vladimir]

Two thoughts:

(a) Cool!

(b) Rather than working on a faster means of travel, why not work instead, or simultaneously, on a means of extending life. 200 Years of travel is more tolerable if one lives to be 300 or more. With genetics controlling the aging process, it seems we are far closer to this than the former.

If you can find a way to stop DNA from disentegrating after X number of divisions, you'd be my hero. For right now, let's work on fusion generators.

[doc_bean]

That sounds nice, but it can only be wrong if light has no mass, then it's mass would be zero, and you'd end up with it's energy = 0*c² = 0, but IIRC light does have energy, think of laserbeams and sunburns.

E=mc^2 is a conversion law I believe. For instance with a nuclear bomb you lose a little bit of mass and gain a lot of energy, the mass is turned into (massless) energy. I don't think it means you need mass to have energy.

[Don Corleone]

That sounds nice, but it can only be wrong if light has no mass, then it's mass would be zero, and you'd end up with it's energy = 0*c² = 0, but IIRC light does have energy, think of laserbeams and sunburns.

If I remember my Electormagnetics properly, you don't calculate the energy of a waveform using that E=mc^2 equation, that just tells you what amount of energy you'll get out of a mass converted to energy.

In order to get the energy of a waveform, according to the esteemed Frenchman Msr. Parseval:

No mass required. I think theoretical physicists go around and around over whether photons have mass or not, but it's not required for them to have mass in order to have energy.

[Moros]

Are these the robotic lemurs you had stashed away, along with Kommodus' nano-bots?

ooh ooh, give them robots some ancient weapons too!

[Moros]

Well The theory of blackholes supports that light has mass, be it a very small one. Also the way we calculate the masses of galaxies is, if I'm not mistaken, also based on the fact that photons have a mass.

However like The Mark said, he is a physisist (or however you write it) I believe, making an object move to a speed approximate to the speed of light is practically almost impossible. The mass it'll get will be enormous, the energy required too. Not only is it hard to get it so fast, controlling it (deccelerating, it's gravity,...) must be even harder.

Also if someone would want to reach the planet it would take quite a while. It can't take much more than 20 years for the person if he'd want to get back to earth afterwards.
So how what average speed will his craft then need to get there in 20 years?
20years=(c*20.5years)/v
<=> 20years*v=(c*20.5years)
<=>v=c*20.5years/20
<=>v=1.025*c
=> v>c!!

SO that seems rather impossible now if the objective would be to get a person over there (without the person having to come back) let's say we have a max of 40 years.
=>v=20.5/40*c
=>v=0.512*c=153 493 738 m / s
this seems theoretically possible but how much energy would that need?
E=0.5*m*v&#178;
That would be: 76746869 times the mass of the object. let's have a round number, what about 500kg?
then 76746869*500kg=38 373 434 500 J
Now is this much or not?
Well let's see:
How much E does it cost to take a car to 120km/h?
well lets see how much does a car weigh? I've taken the mass of an empty Ford Fusion 1.4 TDCi Fusion+
Well that would take this much energy:
1102 kg*120&#178;km&#178;/h&#178;*0.5=7 934 400 J


38 373 434 500J/7 934 400J=4 836.33728

That would mean we'd need the E of 4 836.33728 Empty Ford Fusions accellerating from 0 to 120km/h (without friction that is. But the craft wouldn't have friction either it being in space.)

So Daily we have millions and millions of cars doing this, mulitiple times a day so this seems possible. E might not be the biggest problem in this case. However this of course overly simplified and stuff so it probably is far from correct however it might give us an idea of the actual numbers. And it seems to me that E isn't the biggest problem if we want to send someone to there without him or her having to come back.

[Zaknafien]

Well can't ion drives reach something like 'near' the speed of light if given enough time to accelerate? My understanding was that something with ion drive, like the one tested on some probe a year or two ago, will continuously accelerate until it reaches 99.9% of the speed of light but it would take many years to get going that fast..

[Rameusb5]

Well The theory of blackholes supports that light has mass, be it a very small one. Also the way we calculate the masses of galaxies is, if I'm not mistaken, also based on the fact that photons have a mass.

However like The Mark said, he is a physisist (or however you write it) I believe, making an object move to a speed approximate to the speed of light is practically almost impossible. The mass it'll get will be enormous, the energy required too. Not only is it hard to get it so fast, controlling it (deccelerating, it's gravity,...) must be even harder.

Also if someone would want to reach the planet it would take quite a while. It can't take much more than 20 years for the person if he'd want to get back to earth afterwards.
So how what average speed will his craft then need to get there in 20 years?
20years=(c*20.5years)/v
<=> 20years*v=(c*20.5years)
<=>v=c*20.5years/20
<=>v=1.025*c
=> v>c!!

SO that seems rather impossible now if the objective would be to get a person over there (without the person having to come back) let's say we have a max of 40 years.
=>v=20.5/40*c
=>v=0.512*c=153 493 738 m / s
this seems theoretically possible but how much energy would that need?
E=0.5*m*v²
That would be: 76746869 times the mass of the object. let's have a round number, what about 500kg?
then 76746869*500kg=38 373 434 500 J
Now is this much or not?
Well let's see:
How much E does it cost to take a car to 120km/h?
well lets see how much does a car weigh? I've taken the mass of an empty Ford Fusion 1.4 TDCi Fusion+
Well that would take this much energy:
1102 kg*120²km²/h²*0.5=7 934 400 J


38 373 434 500J/7 934 400J=4 836.33728

That would mean we'd need the E of 4 836.33728 Empty Ford Fusions accellerating from 0 to 120km/h (without friction that is. But the craft wouldn't have friction either it being in space.)

So Daily we have millions and millions of cars doing this, mulitiple times a day so this seems possible. E might not be the biggest problem in this case. However this of course overly simplified and stuff so it probably is far from correct however it might give us an idea of the actual numbers. And it seems to me that E isn't the biggest problem if we want to send someone to there without him or her having to come back.

The problem with your reasoning is that you have a constant velocity. You can't subject the Human body to very high G's for long periods of time. It'll take you a while just to accellerate to 1/2 the speed of light (to use your analogy). Ideally, you'd use around 1 G of accelleration to simulate gravity on your ship. The speed of light = 299,792,458 m/s. So to reach .5 lightspeed at 1 G would take 11.65 years! You'd need exactly the same amount of time to slow down as well.

Let's face it, extra-solar space travel using conventional physics just isn't practical.

Hence my concern about the sun burning out some 2-5 billion years from now. Will we be advanced enough to escape by then?

[Somebody Else]

Is it flat too?

[Moros]

The problem with your reasoning is that you have a constant velocity. You can't subject the Human body to very high G's for long periods of time. It'll take you a while just to accellerate to 1/2 the speed of light (to use your analogy). Ideally, you'd use around 1 G of accelleration to simulate gravity on your ship. The speed of light = 299,792,458 m/s. So to reach .5 lightspeed at 1 G would take 11.65 years! You'd need exactly the same amount of time to slow down as well.

Let's face it, extra-solar space travel using conventional physics just isn't practical.

Hence my concern about the sun burning out some 2-5 billion years from now. Will we be advanced enough to escape by then?

I know it was a very simplification, noting that E wouldn't be that much the problem, rather the speed itself.

[Divinus Arma]

Do the inhabitants of Gliese 581 C need to have their souls saved? We better hurry up and get some missionaries over there to preach the good news!!!!


Seriously, what would be the theological implications of intelligent extraterrestrial life? Not as in an argument for or against the existence of God, but rather the implications for the earth-based interpretations of God's will: Muhammed as the prophet (does this apply to the universe?), and Jesus as saviour (same question.).

All the myth and legend, the puff and stuff, of earthly religion kinda goes out the window, wouldn't ya say?

[Lemur]

The theological implications of intelligent life outside our solar system would be profound. Let's make this easier and consider which religions would not freak out. I think Jews would be okay; aliens don't change their status as God's Chosen. Buddhists would fare well. Scientologists already believe in an intergalactic empire, so their worldview would not shatter. Not sure about Mormons -- they believe in other planets, and they already have Jesus making a trip to the native Americans, so I guess it wouldn't be a stretch to say that Jesus might have stopped off at other civilizations along the way.

Can't think of many more. Fundamentalists of the Big Two would have serious issues.

Assuming whatever intelligence we eventually contact is mortal (and no some self-dividing amoeba thingy that never really dies), it's safe to expect that it will have its own religion already. I can't imagine a self-aware, mortal species not developing a what-happens-when-we-die scenario with all of the attendant theology.

[doc_bean]

Seriously, what would be the theological implications of intelligent extraterrestrial life?

We shall argue whether the war against these abominations should be termed acrusade or a jihad.


Seriously, religions have endurance, while the implications would be profound, I can't see this as being the end of religion or something like that.

I think the Catholic church would start by caling together a bunch of theologians and letting them think about the implications for 20years or so, after that time, the Church would have a good idea of how society thinks about these aliens and will formulate a point accordingly. They might call for missionary missions if they are plausible.

The various protestant cults (heh, no offence people) will react differently, like they always do, a few of them will probably split up (again) over this. Creationists will claim the aliens are a test of our fate, probably.

The Jews won't care, most Muslims won't either I think, they are , after all, also a sort of 'chosen people'.

[Ironside]

Hence my concern about the sun burning out some 2-5 billion years from now. Will we be advanced enough to escape by then?

First, we can "easily" do a generation ship today if we wanted to, second, if we have decandants at that point, it would still be very hard to claim them as humans... How was life a billion year back in time?

[Husar]

Since when do we send missionaries to elephants and giraffes?
If God created aliens, he will surely have his plans for them and I don't know why I should be concerned about these plans, that's my opinion. Then again, we have yet to discover intelligent aliens, once we have, I can talk to them about the issues at hand, no?

[The_Mark]

Well The theory of blackholes supports that light has mass, be it a very small one.

Light doesn't have mass, only momentum derived from its energy*. The thing with gravity and light is that even though light travels straight, uninfluenced by the gravity, the space itself in which light travels is curved by the gravity. So the photons think they're going in a straight line, and they're right, but everybody else thinks they go in a curve. And they're right as well. Simple, yes?

Yeah, I don't get it either.

However like The Mark said, he is a physisist (or however you write it) I believe,

I'm not a physicist, yet. In fact, I sent my application to University of Helsinki today, to the department of physics.

First, we can "easily" do a generation ship today if we wanted to, second, if we have decandants at that point, it would still be very hard to claim them as humans... How was life a billion year back in time?

And they will probably be greeted by a thriving human colony established by the first human visitors of Gliese, who left 200 years after the generation ship, using some snappy anti-matter propulsion.


*)
Photon's energy E = hf = hc/λ
photon's momentum p = E/c

Never heard of Parseval.