I got into the Wait Calculation[1] a few weeks back and made a Jupyter notebook out of it.<p>At our current max speed (692,000 km/hr, stated max speed of Parker Space Probe), it would take about 173,000 years to get to that planet.<p>We could instead choose to Wait and grow our tech. By picking a constant annual growth rate and then doing some calculus to find the minimum, we can calculate the shortest possible time it will take for us to arrive there.<p>One common recommendation for annual energy growth rate is 1.4%, and then taking the square root to get velocity growth rate since velocity has a square root relationship with energy.<p>By plugging that in, we can minimize our time by growing for 1020 years, and then traveling for 144 years, for a total time-from-now at 1164 years.<p>Another paper[2] estimated an annual velocity growth rate of 4.72%, quite a bit faster. Plugging that in, it says we should wait 195 years for a travel time of about 21 years, or 216 years overall. This is of course incorrect since it assumes being able to travel FTL. So if you instead look at how long it would take to get to light speed travel at that rate, you're looking about about 159 years, or arriving at the planet at a time-from-now of about 270 years.<p>Of course, if you're seeking to minimize time-from-now from the perspective of a <i>traveler</i>, maybe you'd take off sooner. Kind of a tradeoff - less time to wait for the traveler, more time to wait for the home planet. I haven't figured out that part of the math yet.<p>[1] <a href="https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Wait_Calculation.html" rel="nofollow">https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1m...</a>
[2] <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.01481" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.01481</a>
Some caveats per Marina Koren <a href="https://twitter.com/marinakoren/status/1171873631808438273" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/marinakoren/status/1171873631808438273</a><p>1. This planet probably doesn’t have a solid surface<p>2. Being in the “habitable zone” doesn’t mean a planet is habitable<p>3. The detection is of water molecules, chances are the water only exists as vapour in the atmosphere of this small gas giant.<p>4. If you ask 10 astronomers about this you will get 11 opinions
With a planet this large, visiting it would be a one way trip due to the "The Tyranny of the Rocket Equation" [0]. I'm looking forward to the day we start finding exo-planets that are closer to Earth in size and which could potentially have space-faring races (and which we could leave if we were ever to visit them).<p>[0] - <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition30/tryanny.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/exped...</a>
A very quick search suggests that earth will become uninhabitable somewhere between 500 million and 2 billion years from now. If we shot a probe to this life-friendly alien planet with some sort of primordial soup, even traveling at the speed of light it would take 4 billion earth years to get there. Do I have that right? Basically we'll never even come close to being around when it finally arrives, if it ever arrives. Has anyone ever thought about doing this? We've shot gold records out into space for aliens with turn-tables. Why haven't we tried this?
Lots of discussion on the possibility of going or communicating, but for me the excitement is the narrowing of uncertainties in the Drake equation and the focusing of discovery of alien life, intelligent or otherwise.<p>Discoveries like this improve our understanding of likelihood of extraterrestrial life, which has direct Earthly implications. It also enables better estimates and searches for planets that are closer, say ~4 to 20 lightyears away, for those super interested in the traveling & communicating possibilities.
Reading about that led me to this article about a water world that was discovered:<p>‘A giant waterworld that is wet to its core has been spotted in orbit around a dim but not too distant star’<p>With oceans 9000 miles deep (15000 km). For context the Earth’s diameter is 7900 miles (12700 km).<p>The imagination really does boggle at the thought. I think science fiction is going to have a hard time keeping up with the incredible science fact we are observing in our lifetimes.<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/dec/16/waterworld-planet-earth-life" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/dec/16/waterworld-p...</a>
There are lots of people in the comments here talking about how long it would take to send a probe, or how many generations a generation ship would have, but it seems clear to me that that's not how humans are going to go to other solar systems.<p>Once we solve mind uploading (assuming that it's possible), we can send a blob of grey goo on a solar sail at a very high acceleration to another solar system. It can shed half of the sail and bounce the laser back to decelerate.<p>The grey goo would go and convert part of asteroid or something to computronium, and then we'd upload a bunch of humans over to the other solar system.
Serious question - Do we have the capability to send human life there now?<p>Obviously its going to be a one way trip. And it would require a generational ship.<p>So could we build a ship that held 12 people initially, 6 couples, all who were allowed to have 2 children, so 24 people max, and could we load it with enough supplies to last over 100 years?<p>Even if the group that eventually arrived had no way to sustain life, and they just went there for a quick swim before dying... is it possible?
This reminds me of a sci-fi book I read when I was a kid called Rocheworld by Robert Forward.<p>They were going to the Barnard Star, but it had binary planets where one was all water.<p>Good book (if I recall)..
That's the kind of news that makes me smile and worry at the same time<p>All my life I wait for the moment we will find life<p>I just afraid if it will really happen from everyone reactins
Sorry if it's been mentioned in the threads before - Here is Phil Plait's (@badastronomer on twitter) practical explanation of this finding - <a href="https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/water-vapor-detected-in-the-atmosphere-of-a-temperate-mini-neptune-exoplanet" rel="nofollow">https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/water-vapor-detected-in-the-at...</a>
TLDR - "NO, THIS DOES NOT MEAN THE PLANET IS EITHER EARTH-LIKE OR HABITABLE."
It's depressing to think that if there is intelligent life on that planet, we won't be able to communicate with them in any way in our lifetime, yet it's so close. Unless they started sending communications our way over a century ago.
Someone please correct me, because with a planet that is at 111 light years away aren't we technically looking back in time?<p>Any type of observation was only a period Of time and any type of life used to be there, but may not be there presently?
I am thinking to get a not very expensive refraktor (120 mm) with Azimutal mounting, for deep space and terrestrial observations. Just interested in Astronomy, but have no idea what level of details can be seen with that kind. I am fascinated by Orion Nebula and Andromeda which I can see with simple 8x42 ED binoculars. Now thinking about telescope. Dobsonians look pretty heavy, I want something portable and inexpensive. Do you have any suggestion? Are refractors good for that?