
Three Planets in Habitable Zone of Nearby Star - Libertatea
http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1328/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EsoTopNews+%28ESO+Top+News%29
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cryptoz
This is an amazing discovery! The star is only 22 lightyears away, and it's
got three potentially habitable planets. That's astounding. This is probably
going to be one of our first destinations, when humanity starts building
interstellar craft. Of course, the discoveries are still very early right now
and we'll probably find all sorts of Earth-like planets quite close. But three
Super Earths in the habitable zone of a close-by star? That's almost as good
as it gets.

Edit: And surely this will be a focus of searching for life as well. A high
concentration of life-capable planets in the same radio direction? Yes please.
Also, I've often wondered if having a high density of habitable planets in the
same system as your species would increase the chances and speed to becoming a
spacefaring species. If you have a lot of places to go that are quite inviting
and not that difficult to get to, you'll probably go.

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exratione
Seems unlikely to be the first choice of destination on that basis. By the
time the technology exists to reliably transport people (or equivalent amounts
of mass) to other planetary systems in a usefully short amount of time, then
the technology will also exist to cost-effectively (a) make everything
habitable for baseline humans via habitats and other forms of engineering, and
(b) engineer sentient entities that can live comfortably in native conditions
near anywhere in a star system.

So whether or not the system has habitable zone planets will be irrelevant.
Our descendants will go to the closest one first.

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mtgx
Could still be useful in case anything ever happens to our solar system.

But 22 lightyears means it's still going to be one-way trip, even with
matter/anti-matter engines. Unless we develop immortality by then of course...

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Aardwolf
Or procreating on the space ship.

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Fargren
How is that not a one way trip?

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cryptoz
Staying on Earth is also a one way trip then.

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chucknelson
I think the point was more about a one-way trip for a single person.

I'd agree that it's not a one-way trip for humanity, though. Once some of us
get there (e.g., progeny of the original crew), eventually some of us could
get back to Earth too (at some later date). Assuming Earth isn't destroyed by
that point...

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hnriot
Probably by the time the progeny get back to Earth the current species will
have self-annihilated and the earth would have returned to a more peaceful
place, the atmosphere recovered, the vegetation replacing the asphalt and the
oceans clean and pure. A few thousands years peace is exactly what the Earth
needs.

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rgbrenner
Link is broken (404). Here's an alternative:

[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130625073544.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130625073544.htm)

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DougWebb
Based on the artist's conception: we've discovered Tatooine!

It sounds like there's two problems for anyone/thing living on these planets.
First, they're closer to their star than Mercury is to our sun. Unless the
atmosphere is pretty dense and there's a strong magnetic field, the radiation
on the surface is going to be pretty intense.

Second, one of the notes at the bottom of the article says the team believes
the planets day and year are the same length, so one side always faces the
star. That'll reduce the habitable area to a ring around the planet instead of
the entire surface. We'd still be ok to put a colony there and we could
probably generate lots of energy from the temperature differential, but it's
much less likely that life would have evolved in that environment.

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GotAnyMegadeth
I'd like to see a simulation of how this system's orbits work. Amazing

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cryptoz
When the Exoplanet Explorer app gets updated with this data we're going to be
in for a treat.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.burlock.ex...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.burlock.exoplanetexplorer)

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Fuzzwah
For anyone who is interested in this, I highly recommend listening to the
podcast of Richard Pogge's Astronomy 141 course at Ohio State Uni.

[http://www.astronomy.ohio-
state.edu/~pogge/Ast141/#lectures](http://www.astronomy.ohio-
state.edu/~pogge/Ast141/#lectures) (iTunes link:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/id559775126](https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/id559775126)
)

Here's the overview:

Astronomy 141, Life in the Universe, is an introduction to Astrobiology. The
topics covered in this course lie at the interfaces between astronomy,
chemistry, biology, geology, and the earth and planetary sciences. We will
learn about scientists' ongoing quest for answers to some of the most
fundamental human questions: How did life originate on Earth? Is there life on
other worlds? Are we alone in the universe? What is the long-term future of
life in the universe?

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rheide
What would be the timeframe of reaching/colonizing these planets? With another
20 years of engine development, would it be possible to reach these planets in
our lifetime? That would be a world-changing event.

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cryptoz
Yes it would be possible. Project Orion in the 1950s demonstrated that using
nuclear pulse propulsion, you could accelerate to (max) 0.1c for intersteller
missions. If we were to actually spend a little bit of money and effort on
real space travel - which we're about to, if SpaceX and Plantery Resources
succeed - I think it's completely reasonable to think that we will launch (and
perhaps arrive) on these planets in our lifetimes.

It's optimistic, sure, but it's possible.

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rgbrenner
0.1c would make this a 220 year journey each way. So what you're really saying
is: no, it's not possible reach these planets in our lifetime.

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DougWebb
Is that fast enough for relativistic effects on-board? It might be 220 years
for those left behind, but for the people on the ship it might be less than a
lifetime. They'd probably still have to raise children on the way to take care
of the exploring when they got there.

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cgore
218 years, instead of 220.

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=time+dilation+calculato...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=time+dilation+calculator&a=*FS-_**RelativisticTimeDilationFormula.to-.*RelativisticTimeDilationFormula.t-.*RelativisticTimeDilationFormula.v--&f2=220+year&x=0&y=0&f=RelativisticTimeDilationFormula.t_220+year&f3=0.1+c&f=RelativisticTimeDilationFormula.v_0.1+c)

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Nursie
So.... interstellar colonisation kickstarter project anyone?

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shank8
We define the word habitable to be the ability for a planet to have life on
it. But that is by standards of Oxygen/Nitrogen breathing, H20 drinking
lifeforms. Who's to say that there aren't carbon life forms that have evolved
to live off elements that are toxic to us

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mehmehshoe
We have those life forms here already=) Microbes that eat arsenic. I am sure
there are a lot more examples in extreme areas of our planet if there was a
bigger budget to find them.

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yohann305
22 light years, in layman's terms equals 5 billion round-trips from San
Francisco to Paris.

.

\- SF to Paris (1 trip = 5831.79 miles)

\- double that for a round trip

\- 22 light years = 5.87849981 × 10^12 miles

\- Divide 22 light years by the round trip, yields total trip count.

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vlasev
Actually, it's WORSE.

1 light year = 9.454 x 10^15 meters 22 light years = 2.080 x 10^17 meters SF
to Paris, round trip = 1.877 x 10^7 meters Number of trips = 1.108 x 10^10

In layman's terms, it's about 11 billion trips!

Here's another way to get a sense of scale. The earth rotates the sun at an
orbit with semi-major axis of about 150 million kilometers. Using some data
you can determine that the orbit of Earth is about 9.398 x 10^11 meters in
circumference. Divide the distance to the star by this number to get 2.213 x
10^5 years. That is, it takes the Earth about 220 thousand years to go this
distance around the sun.

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jvzr
I'm getting a 404 error. Even the link posted on their homepage sends the same
error.

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3rd3
It should be easy to detect whether any radio signals come from that
direction.

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Simple1234
1.29326996 × 10 to the 14th miles = Nearby

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cryptoz
Some exoplanets discovered recently are 10,000 lightyears away. So indeed, 22
lightyears is absolutely nearby.

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Simple1234
Kittens are gigantic, compared to protozoa. That doesn't mean we should
describe kittens as cute, fuzzy, and gigantic. I would be ok with "only 22
lightyears away." But "nearby"? Most people have a hard time grasping the size
of our galaxy. "Nearby" does not help promote a good understanding of the
discovery IMHO.

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mikeash
Words like these are inherently relative and depend on context.

If the context is protozoa, then a kitten is absolutely "gigantic". There's
nothing wrong with that at all.

The local grocery store is "nearby" for me, about 500 meters. I sit "far away
from" the window in my office, even though it's still two orders of magnitude
(and then some) closer than the store. Context.

"Nearby" is absolutely an appropriate word to use for a distance of 22 light
years when discussing exoplanets.

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MrSourz
especially when you consider that Alpha Centuri is 4.367 light years away, and
that is the closest thing, 5 times that is pretty damn nearby.

If your friend lived 5 houses down the street I think that'd qualify as
nearby.

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codex
The planets have three suns? Only three more suns to Nightfall!

