First Habitable Planet Confirmed by French Scientists

[rokkolpo]

Ugh.

I hate how we assume ALL life requires earth like conditions.

Well yeah, that's why it's an assumption.
It's not like we know for sure.

It's just more likely I guess.

 

[ReaperzXIII]

5. Do what we always do when finding new things...

doing step 3 over and over again?

Also, 20 lightyears really is close. Let's invent some kind of hyperdrive and terraform this nice planet.

I meant more pillaging and slaughtering anything that says we can't have their land

 

[Outright Villainy]

The bad news is that even though the Gliese 581 is fairly close to Earth, cosmically speaking, it would still take a very long time for us to get there. Even if we could travel at light speed, which last I checked was still technically impossible due to Einstein's little theory, it would still take us 20 years to reach the Gliese 581 system. If we used the same technology that was used to launch the shuttle Endeavor this week, the journey to Gliese would take almost 300,000 years.

Actually, given our current physics theories, if we were traveling at near light speed, it would probably just take a couple weeks to get there.

That is, assuming we can find a way to do that and keep it going for 20 years. But if we did, it wouldn't take much time at all.

Ta da. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_laws_of_motion]

Accelerate to near light speed, then turn off the generator. Better yet, relativistic effects mean the time will seem to pass by quickly for those on board.

Huzzah!

 

[Rainforce]

5. Do what we always do when finding new things...

doing step 3 over and over again?

Also, 20 lightyears really is close. Let's invent some kind of hyperdrive and terraform this nice planet.

I meant more pillaging and slaughtering anything that says we can't have their land

yep, thats kinda like the thing I said XD

 

[Seneschal]

Nice. Shame the gravity and atmosphere are slightly horrible to us, but I'm sure if we somehow end up there we'd be fine somehow.

Also, it's not impossible, due to quantum physics and all that jazz. Bloody science is always changing it's view, though faster than light is always an odd topic to be poking around.

Why can't one go the speed of light? Light does it all the time.

Light is massless. Unless you want to just send a signal to the planet, you'll be sending something with mass. But, simply put, to move something you have to give it energy. Since mass and energy are two measures for the same thing, like feet and inches, an object gains mass the more energy it has. Essentially, when any mass starts to approach the speed of light, it becomes infinitely heavy, and infinite energy is required to accelerate it even faster. So only massless stuff can reach the limit.

We could still get pretty close, even 80% or 90% light speed would be awesome for trotting around nearby star systems.

 

[Leviathan_]

anyone want to assist me in the creation of a gravity drive?

Sure bro, I'll come over to your place this weekend. I'll bring some donuts.

 

[UltraDeth]

If only we had some travel. Smegheads

 

[Cowabungaa]

This is cool, though I'm not a fan of life having pre-defined parameters. Aliens could be radically different from what we're used to, but we're so convinced that life can be defined by the way it's found here that we could end up passing right by a planet covered in life, just because we don't think anything can survive there

Of course, and no doubt that those researchers know that themselves, but you have to start somewhere with searching for life. For now, these are the only parameters of life that we know of and the only things we can actually look for. You can't really look for nothing.

Plus, it's nice to know which planets could be habitable for us. We gotta expand some day y'know.

Light is massless. Unless you want to just send a signal to the planet, you'll be sending something with mass. But, simply put, to move something you have to give it energy. Since mass and energy are two measures for the same thing, like feet and inches, an object gains mass the more energy it has. Essentially, when any mass starts to approach the speed of light, it becomes infinitely heavy, and infinite energy is required to accelerate it even faster. So only massless stuff can reach the limit.

We could still get pretty close, even 80% or 90% light speed would be awesome for trotting around nearby star systems.

Hence why NASA, until recently, did some theoretical research on bending space-time to circumvent that nasy bugger Einstein.

 

[Meggiepants]

Welp, there goes the neighborhood. I guess it's time to move.

 

[MrGFunk]

We ramp up the stasis development, otherwise the crew we send is gonna be so inbred by the time we get there the double gravity won't be the only reason they're hunched over.

 

[bdcjacko]

Nerts to this, I'm going there now. Catch ya'll later.

 

[Exocet]

We should probe the surface! Who knows how many assault rifles will be upgraded with the collected minerals.
It kind of sucks to be the ones discovering where to go, but not the ones going ourselves.
I want space colonization damnit!

 

[TimeLord]

Can we please rename it? Maybe to something along the lines of Gallifrey?

 

[Souplex]

Wait, does this mean that France legally owns them, or do they have to actually land there first to own it?

 

[thirdsonsaburo]

Somebody needs to discover us some Element Zero, stat.

Joking aside, this is incredible. And really, 20 years to the nearest habitable planet discovered? That ain't so bad! We could be seeing the inhabitants of our little blue world walking on the surface of Gliese 581d within our lifetimes.

Maybe soon if our tech improves.

 

[EHKOS]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5mLjKI968g

...I WANNA LIVE ON THAT ONE!

 

[diebane]

I think the bigger news is that if it could support life, it could have evolved it. The bad news: With twice Earth gravity, our future alien overlords would be built like friggin' tanks. The good news: Presumably, they wouldn't be able to breathe our atmosphere if they invade before we turn it into theirs.

You would think that a civilization evolved high enough to cruise through space for at least 20 years would figure out a way to survive in our atmosphere like we would do on their planet, with some kind of gastank.

Then again...

Spoiler

mfG diebane