Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Saturday April 22 2017, @04:32AM   Printer-friendly

A exoplanet has been discovered (paywalled) that is called "LHS 1140b" and it's deemed a super earth. It lies in the Goldilocks zone where water is in an accessible fluid phase. The atmosphere, however, also plays a critical role, as can be demonstrated with the planet Venus. Seven exoplanets had been found two months ago orbiting TRAPPIST-1, but LHS 1140b is deemed exceptional. Jason Dittmann, an astronomer at Harvard University that lead the research group, says it's the most interesting exoplanet he has seen in the past decade. In contrast with the TRAPPIST-1 star, LHS 1140 spins slowly and does not emit much high-energy radiation, which may also help the likelihood of life on its planet.

The planet is circa 5*10^9 years old, 500*10^6 years older than Earth. The diameter is 40% larger, the mass 6.6 times that of Earth, and gravity is 3.4 times that of Earth.

The first exoplanet was discovered in 1995 and since then at least 2000 has been discovered.

Many more details are available in a research letter (pdf).


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:16AM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:16AM (#497793)

    Useless since we cannot meaningfully get to any of them in less than 1000's of years, even at light speed this one would be half a lifetime just to get there so if you started at birth..
    Until we can get around light speed interstellar travel is mostly meaningless

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +1  
       Informative=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   1  
  • (Score: 2) by melikamp on Saturday April 22 2017, @06:27AM (3 children)

    by melikamp (1886) on Saturday April 22 2017, @06:27AM (#497822) Journal

    even at light speed this one would be half a lifetime just to get there so if you started at birth..

    Actually, close to light speed the time dilates so that it actually looks similar to the original Star Wars: the travel time of the speeding observer compresses into seconds if the speed is high enough. The universe ages by as many (light)years as you travel, but for you it feels like stepping into an elevator.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation#Space_flight [wikipedia.org]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @11:09AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @11:09AM (#497863)

      Actually, close to light speed the time dilates

      Actually, who cares? Your spacecraft would be reduced to dust. Look up "relativity" sometime and how high speed impacts would destroy you and your spacecraft rather quickly.

      Reality is conventional travel is completely impractical for interstellar distances.

      • (Score: 4, Funny) by art guerrilla on Saturday April 22 2017, @11:42AM (1 child)

        by art guerrilla (3082) on Saturday April 22 2017, @11:42AM (#497876)

        uh duh: deflector shields and tractor beams avoid 100% of all collisions, i have it on good authority of a certain engineer on the USS Enterprise...
        *snort* noobz...

        • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:20PM

          by isostatic (365) on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:20PM (#497980) Journal

          Tractor beam didn't stop the Bozeman, only decompressing the main shuttlebay did

  • (Score: 2) by Ramze on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:03AM (3 children)

    by Ramze (6029) on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:03AM (#497829)

    Meaningfully within your lifetime, but perhaps it's meaningful on civilization time-scales. We can send a probe that might return data within a few hundred years. That may seem futile because you'll be dead when you get the reply, but it might be meaningful to those that are alive when the data arrives. It could significantly help astrophysicists with their understanding of how planets and solar systems form. It might change the world's religious beliefs if we find signs of life there. Maybe, if we're extremely lucky, we might even make contact with another civilization -- perhaps even one millions of years older than ours with technology beyond our understanding... and they might loan us a copy of their planetary database to peruse.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:18AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:18AM (#497831)

      while interesting the utility is in question, we understand orbital mechanics well, and anything further away is not really relevant, does it really matter if alpha century operates under different laws of physics than here? not to us it doesn't, don't get me wrong I support sending probes if we can (which we probably can't) but lets not live in magic land, until and if we can find a way around the speed of light we are here and we will likely never be able to do more that 1/10 c so that makes alpha centary more than 40 years each way and this star 400 years away, I could be wrong but we are very bad at making even simple things that last that long never mind extremely complex spacecraft

      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:57AM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:57AM (#497840) Journal

        If you talk about utility, you have to say: Utility for what? Because if you follow that chain, you'll always end up at some ultimate goal that has no utility, but is desired for itself.

        In this specific case, the ultimate goal is understanding the world. It's the one goal that distinguishes us from the other life forms on this planet.

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @01:04PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @01:04PM (#497893)

        while interesting the utility is in question, we understand orbital mechanics well, and anything further away is not really relevant, does it really matter if alpha century operates under different laws of physics than here? not to us it doesn't

        I'd think that discovering that laws of physics are local would be a very important observation. After all, stuff in space tends to move around, explode, irradiate, etc.