NASA: 'Closest thing yet to ANOTHER EARTH' - FOUND NASA boffins say they have found the closest thing yet to another Earth – Kepler-452b. Apparently the Valeria*-esque planet has heavy gravity, such that should humans ever colonise it they would become immensely strong. "This is the closest thing we've yet found to another Earth," said Jon Jenkins, Kepler data analysis chief …
You could get used to twice the gravity - with a thicker atmosphere you'd get more oxygen in each breath (assuming a similar ~19% oxygen like Earth)
Though they'd need to solve the problems with losing bone & muscle mass on a long space trip even if you could get there at 3000x light speed, because it is hard for astronauts when they first return to Earth as it is!
You could get used to twice the gravity - with a thicker atmosphere you'd get more oxygen in each breath (assuming a similar ~19% oxygen like Earth)
And anyone coming back... even next generations will be bigger and stronger than anyone on Earth.... which will terrify most of the natives here.
Is the human body even capable of living at a constant 2G?
I think it's likely. Other vertebrates have been raised successfully under continuous high acceleration (see e.g. Ed Regis' Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition). 2G really isn't that bad. Humans do well in a pretty wide range of other conditions - altitude and temperature extremes, for example - that require their bodies to adapt.
The circulatory system probably wouldn't even notice once the subject was acclimatized. It's the joints that would take a beating. And of course falls would be more dangerous.
Oh, and it'd be harder to swallow while upside-down. Peristalsis can only do so much.
CM: "...after 1400 years of weightless space travel."
There's that far-too-common 'cognitive bias' (faulty thinking) again.
Something is 1400 Light Years away.
So everyone immediately assumes that humans can travel at the Speed of Light.
They're confused by the concept of a cosmic 'speed limit'. "Hey! Maybe if we travel there at night when the traffic police are off duty, we could push it a bit and get there in only 1000 years."
Just curious to know what part you don't agree with. That there are other planets outside the solar system? That the universe is about 13 billion years old? The age of the earth?
It's getting pretty hard to make coherent arguments against these things nowadays, so I wonder what part of this you think is not scientific.
> Zeta Reticuli
Which was also selected on a bad match of a "starmap" drawn under hypnosis, based on noisy information about star positions .... you are bound to find a match like that.
The alienselves never even said it was "starmap". Could have been a wormhole diagram into alternate dimensions for all we know. It was also 2+1D in the original form, whether real or imagined (actually, I hear the local planetary alignment at the time of the first flashback after the abduction matches with the big round things being Jupiter and Saturn, but I could never be bothered to check it)
You only want to borrow money from people who live at a constant 2 gravities, if you're really, really, really sure you can pay it back.
Otherwise you're liable to meet Ron from collections. He's only 5' tall, but he's 7' wide and weighs 20 stone of pure muscle. And he's only the accountant...
So in other words the headline "we found another Earth" is bullshit, just like the last two thousand times we've heard it.
At least it's not a star-hugger with a six day orbit and an atmosphere made of vaporized lead and death this time.
Exciting stuff for sure but people probably learned to ignore "new Earth found" headlines a decade ago.
Exciting it is, but I agree, the title is rubbish.
Earth to Scientists : you will be able to declare that you have found a new Earth when you find and Earth-sized rocky planet in the Goldilocks zone.
Five times the size and twice the gravity is NOT Earth-like. It would be very uncomfortable to try and establish a colony there (forgetting all about getting there in the first place), assuming the atmosphere is breathable.
On the other hand, hats off to people who can look at a planet 1400 ly away and determine that it has volcanic activity. They must be wizards.
Five times the size and twice the gravity is NOT Earth-like.
Twice the gravity is a relatively minor issue, and five times the size is a bonus.
It would be very uncomfortable to try and establish a colony there (forgetting all about getting there in the first place), assuming the atmosphere is breathable.
Any planet we're likely to find is going to be "very uncomfortable". In the entire universe, sure, we'd find places so Earth-like we couldn't tell the difference. (Cosmologists will claim that there are ones where it'd be impossible to tell the difference.) But even in our Hubble volume, and certainly within the radius we can analyze using current technology on Earth or in orbit around it, it's extremely unlikely we'd find anything so accommodating to our tastes.
True, there should be a huge number of candidates - rocky planets of about the same size in the G-zone with suitable composition and blah blah blah. But they'd smell funny and the light would be a bit off and the local flora and fauna wouldn't be good eats. Trace mineral concentrations would be off. The day would be too short or too long.
I'm not saying we'll never find anything habitable (though I don't believe colonization of other planets is justified by anything other than species hubris, even if we can find a way to make it feasible with ludicrous amounts of shielding and generation- or seeding-ships). But if you could pop over there, you wouldn't like it much. It's the details that would get to you.
Antarctica is likely to remain more congenial than any other planets we find in the neighborhood.
It's about the same age.
It's about the same size.
It orbits the same star and about the same distance.
It's called Venus. Let's go take a stroll round it shall we? According to the same readings we have of this Earth 2.0, it's much more likely to be hospitable.
as to how life was allowed to evolve here. For instance our magnetic field.
We know we would have lost a good portion of our atmosphere without it and it helps to protect living things on the ground, but what other effects does it have on the air we have, to allow us to live in the first place? Without that magnetic field, what would out atmosphere look like? Another Venus?
All this talk about finding another Earth is BS. The list needed to make another planet, an inhabitable earth, is long and we do not understand how long that list has to be.
So stop already trying to tell us we found another earth. No, we haven't. We found another rocky planet, in the Goldilocks zone. Normally it's within 50% larger that the size of our own planet. A real another Earth would have to be with in a few percent of everything of our own planet. Sunlight, gravity, magnetic field, water, minerals/metals required for life, etc.
And even if we did find one, there is no guarantee of any kind that there is any life more intelligent than say, goldfish there. No matter the age of that planet. "Intelligent life" may be a fluke of this planet alone. At least until Mother Earth finishes correcting her mistake.
You're right. Talk of another "Earth" is rubbish. We don't know how long the list is to make another "Earth"
But we are finding evidence of planets that more and more match the criteria we know we require. They may be beyond our physical reach, but they are physically there.
And that just reaffirms my understanding of science being right and religion being bunkus.
Religion is not "bunkus", it is a necessary tool in the construction of a society that is not based on you-got-what-I-want-give-it-or-I-kill-you.
Religion is also a tool that can help people be better to themselves and to others. It is not the only tool, but it is a good tool when properly used, like all tools.
Finally, religion is a very good intellectual exercise, and anything that makes people think is a good thing.
Unfortunately, most people don't think. They just repeat endlessly the same words without bothering about the significance. Also, people just love to spout doctrine and feel superior. THAT is bunkus, not religion itself.
Science does no better on that score. You can discuss endlessly with someone who thinks the Moon landings were faked, you will not convince him because he doesn't want to engage the brain and make the effort to understand.
Religion and science stand hand in hand to enlighten us, it is we who are stupid cavemen, mouths agape in our ignorance.
Are you seriously trying to compare science to religion by using moon-landing deniers as examples of followers of science?
And really claiming that without religion we would all be killing each other to get what we want? (weren't the conquistadors pretty religious? and the crusaders? and the vikings? the Romans?) would you actually murder your neighbour for some Ben and Jerry's if Jesus wasn't stopping you?
As for your claim that religion makes people think, isn't faith an unquestioning belief, in the absence of evidence?
No, faith means having doubts. If you are certain you have no faith, there being no need for it.
Which is why many religious people actually have no faith them being so certain and so their faith cannot save them.
Scientists in general have faith becuse they can never be certain - so will you see many Scientsts in heaven and few religious?
@Sweep: I wonder what the Venn diagram of moon landing deniers and religious types is? Suspect a fairly heavy overlap, quite possibly the former almost exclusively contained within the latter given a propensity for believing nonsense in the face of overwhelming evidence on both parts.
"Religion is not "bunkus", it is a necessary tool in the construction of a society that is not based on you-got-what-I-want-give-it-or-I-kill-you."
Religion is bunk, but that's not to say it doesn't have a useful function in developing a society when there are many unanswered questions.
Religion is no longer necessary as we now have answers to most of the questions religion used to provide (incorrect) answers to.
That's not to say all the answers we have now are all correct but they are more correct than those supplied by religion and they allow for development while those in religion are static and dogmatic.
@Pascal Monett: you've got your tenses mixed up, please rewrite in the past tense when referring to the utility of religion, we're done with that shit, time to move on.
I'm sure that if I'm wrong on this whatever flavour of magic sky fairy you adhere to will get in touch to advise us all.
Religion is not "bunkus", it is a necessary tool in the construction of a society that is not based on you-got-what-I-want-give-it-or-I-kill-you.
You're reversing cause and effect. Religion, being a human construct, is an expression of innate, or at least culturally ingrained, human motivations.
Furthermore, if religion abolishes you-got-what-I-want-give-it-or-I-kill-you (which is unproven), it does so in order to substitute you-believe-something-different-convert-or-I-kill-you.
Furthermore, if religion abolishes you-got-what-I-want-give-it-or-I-kill-you (which is unproven), it does so in order to substitute you-believe-something-different-convert-or-I-kill-you.
<cough> ISIL, the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, burning or drowning 'witches' <cough>
Religion does not do that.
Men do that.
But it's okay, we'll get it right in a few millennia.
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