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posted by martyb on Saturday October 31 2015, @08:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the international-calls-take-on-a-new-meaning dept.

Twenty years ago today, an invisible object circling an obscure star in the constellation Pegasus overturned everything astronomers knew about planets around other stars. No, the fallout was even bigger than that. The indirect detection of 51 Pegasi b—the first planet ever found around a star similar to the sun—revealed that they had never really known anything to begin with.

At the time, even the most adventurous minds blithely assumed that our solar system was more or less typical, a template for all the others. 51 Peg b threw a big splash of reality in their faces. The newfound world was bizarre, a Jupiter-size world skimming the surface of its star in a blistering-fast "year" that lasted just 4.2 days. Its existence ran counter to the standard theories of how planets form and evolve. It answered one big question: Yes, other planetary systems really do exist. But it raised a thousand others.

How long before we discover signals from one of those planets, and what will it mean for our civilization?


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  • (Score: 2) by tibman on Sunday November 01 2015, @12:02AM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 01 2015, @12:02AM (#257039)

    I do remember an episode where a transporter couldn't verify the occupant successfully transported so it rematerialized them back on the ship. There was now two of the same person. One was no more of a copy than the other. Both had a right to live. Think about it with yourself. If the other version of you withdrew all your money to go buy a house you would certainly object. But both are you and both have the same rights. You can't just kill one either.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 01 2015, @12:36AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 01 2015, @12:36AM (#257052)

    I thought they ensured that couldn't happen by using the energy from the destruction of the person to power the formation of the new transported person.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 01 2015, @01:03AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 01 2015, @01:03AM (#257062)

      They still had an episode about it.

      Thomas Riker [wikia.com]