NASA to Make BIG Announcement Live on Thursday - Another Earth?!

a reply to: carewemust

Interstellar.

originally posted by: GetHyped
a reply to: carewemust

Interstellar.

Thank-you! I'll need to watch it at least one more time in order to get my head around the various science concepts it explored.
-cwm

originally posted by: carewemust

originally posted by: GetHyped
a reply to: carewemust

Interstellar.

Thank-you! I'll need to watch it at least one more time in order to get my head around the various science concepts it explored.
-cwm

Maybe you put in some spoiler warning next time? lol. I hadn't seen the movie and I feel like I don't need to anymore. :

a reply to: JadeStar

Thanks, I somehow forgot about relativity. At any rate, that amount of time in a small confined space would wear on the inhabitants. Odds are unless they are made to interact closely for a length of time beforehand to see how they work on a social scale, it is going to be a group of scientists who haven't met for more than a few weeks in the total prep time. That is something we are working on though, as well as the long term effects of microgravity on the human body.

So, an Earth-like planet, where humanoid aliens could in theory have evolved millions of year ago and be technologically advanced compared to us today. But with higher gravity than on Earth. Meaning if one of them happened to come here, he would, in our lower gravity, be faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound

So now we know where Superman came from

originally posted by: Jekka
a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn

If we thought that way a few hundred years ago we would have never crossed the Atlantic. Part of learning our way through things as a fledgling species is making mistakes. It is unfortunate, but we as a species don't learn very well through patience. If we did, the concept of a mad scientist wouldn't exist.

Go ahead and slam me for this but I just can't resist.

There are a few folk still alive that wish we had never crossed the Atlantic.

Who knows what would have happen if we had waited a mere 50 years more? Would we have been less greedy, less selfish, more humane?

Probably not, as we really haven't changed all that much with time. That is why we are not ready for this type of travel. We are not looking to bring anything of value. We are only interested in what we can use and or take.

a reply to: carewemust

At the risk of further *SPOILERS* for Interstellar, the gravity effect of a black hole on time causes a dilation the closer you get to a dense gravity source. So the closer they got to the center of it, the slower time was for them even though they perceived it as running normally. An onlooker would see them moving incredibly slowly. Stargate SG-1 did something with this as well.

Just to humanize this a little...

So I went and looked at when they first spotted a transit of the planet announced today. I believe it was in 2011.

The planet is 1,400 light years away which means light from its star takes 1,400 years to reach our Earth.

The planet is also around 2 billion years older than Earth.

With that in mind:

NASA's Kepler spacecraft first spotted this planet by looking for a small dip in the light of the star it orbits as the planet passed between it's star and Earth about 50 years before Christopher Columbus was born. It would take 1,400 years for that dip in light to reach Earth and Kepler.

If life existed on that planet and became advanced and technological in nature then it might be or have been like we may become in the far future if we survive the next 2 billion years.

At the time their planet passed between their star and us, 1,400 years ago any alien astronomers (if they existed on that planet) looking in our direction with some sort of immense advanced super array of space telescopes would see our Earth as it existed in the year 789.

Such an advanced alien space telescope array might have been able to see something down to the size of a small car.

If so then they what might they have see?

Pyramids in Egypt, The Great Wall of China, the Pyramid at Chichen Itza, some of the villages and towns of the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia and a whole lot of wars and conflicts.

a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn

I agree we are a greedy species and there is no telling how culture in the Americas would have progressed without eastern interference, they already had a system of government (the tenets of which we based a lot of US laws on) and many other things that don't get mentioned a whole lot because it's easier to swallow that we have slaughtered (read: manifest destiny) and then educated savages than to have decimated an intricate culture and indoctrinated the remaining people.

originally posted by: ScientificRailgun

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: ScientificRailgun
a reply to: JadeStar

Bingo. Ya nailed it. Just by setting foot on the planet we could be endangering not only ourselves, but the entire ecosystem of the planet. One micro-organism could set of a mass extinction.

Yes. I would hope by the time we can travel to some of these worlds in person that we have some sort of moral code (prime directive?) which would forbid any human from setting foot on a planet containing alien life until such time that the risk to both the human and alien life were well known.

It would be a shame if some kinda far future maverick set foot on a lush, vibrant, world only to sneeze and kill the planet.

We'd then have to catch and try that person for genocide.

Genocide? That's too narrow of a scope. lol

Is there a "cide" for an entire planet? Biocide? Habicide? Planecide?

Biomeicide maybe?

a reply to: JadeStar

There we go. I knew Ms. Science Lady could do it! Biomeicide.

Let's be friends now.

originally posted by: Jekka
a reply to: JadeStar

A well made point. We have examples on our own planet of silica-based life. Not that I am a Trekkie but we will likely have to develop something similar to the "Prime Directive" when dealing with new worlds, firstly so that we don't simply ride in as minions of pestilence and secondly, could you imagine if someone showed up here when we were in the beginning of our industrial age, or during Manifest Destiny and showed us how to make nuclear weapons? We would have utterly destroyed ourselves.

Exactly. Imagine for example the hypothetical aliens I imagined above seeing our world as it appeared in the year 789 and setting off in some sort of warp speed starship to arrive sometime close to that year not only with nuclear weapons but with perhaps even more destructive technologies which might lurk between now and 2 billion years in our future, to give to the warring tribes of humanity....

No need for an "alien invasion" just give the kids the matches and gasoline and they will do the job for you.

EDIT: And sadly, probably still would.

a reply to: carewemust

Are you talking about the newer movie, "Intersteller"! Was a good flik!! ...

a reply to: JadeStar

Our exploration and listening to of space has a lot of ego wrapped up in it. For one, we assume that any species we find will be broadcasting within the same band of frequencies we use for communication and for two, that they are still broadcasting, i.e. have not surpassed us technologically. Realistically speaking, we are a very young species on the time scale of the universe. Our planet has only been around a very short period of time since planets first started developing out of the stray gasses and material in the universe. It's like they are a well educated 70 year old physicist trying to communicate with a newborn child. The possibility of finding them is also not accounting for the fact that there are likely many species of intelligent life that have lived and died long before we even began planting seeds in the ground. We also can't account for the fact that the life may not expel the same products we do or may not be at a stage of development that allows broadcast communications. Imagine how disappointing it would be if the first world we found life on, even if it was only a few light years away was still learning how to make fire, or was at the birth of the development of radio and didn't have the means to even decrypt and understand our messages. Bearing in mind that one of the things that helped us to develop codes, ciphers and decryption methods in general was the necessity borne from warfare. Suppose they didn't have a world war in which codes needed to be developed? Or they didn't have such a poor understanding of their own history that they would need to re-learn how to read old languages and thus develop it for that purpose. Too many factors we don't consider...

Which page is the big announcement from today on please?

should be reposted from time to time for those unable to read a million pages to discover what the big deal was.

originally posted by: Jekka
a reply to: JadeStar

Our exploration and listening to of space has a lot of ego wrapped up in it. For one, we assume that any species we find will be broadcasting within the same band of frequencies we use for communication and for two, that they are still broadcasting, i.e. have not surpassed us technologically.

Um not necessarily.. You might want to read this ATS thread I posted back in April: Denying Ignorance About SETI: It's Not Just About Radio Anymore

a reply to: JadeStar

Great post, and I get what you are saying, we do scan a lot of channels within the electromagnetic frequency range, I was referring to things we haven't much comprehension of at this point, a sci-fi example would be sub-light communication, while another less fiction based idea would be fourth dimension communications. Things we couldn't hope to detect with our current technology. Another thing to consider is unidirectional communications, point to point or laser-like messaging that doesn't messily broadcast in a large swath in the hopes of hitting its target but something of more finesse that would have to be pointed directly at us to be received.

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: Jekka
a reply to: JadeStar

Our exploration and listening to of space has a lot of ego wrapped up in it. For one, we assume that any species we find will be broadcasting within the same band of frequencies we use for communication and for two, that they are still broadcasting, i.e. have not surpassed us technologically.

Um not necessarily.. You might want to read this ATS thread I posted back in April: Denying Ignorance About SETI: It's Not Just About Radio Anymore

How did I miss this one. Thanks for mentioning it. Your intelligence in the field is astonishing and my pea sized brain has a hard time comprehending it lol.

originally posted by: Jekka
a reply to: JadeStar

Great post, and I get what you are saying, we do scan a lot of channels within the electromagnetic frequency range, I was referring to things we haven't much comprehension of at this point, a sci-fi example would be sub-light communication, while another less fiction based idea would be fourth dimension communications. Things we couldn't hope to detect with our current technology.

If we couldn't hope to detect them with our current technology then there is no point discussing them since we can only search for the detectable.

Even your super advanced civilization using far future undetectable communications technology might do other things which ARE detectable with our current technology.

Most of what our own civilization does which is detectable from interstellar distances doesn't involve communication at all. We light cities, not because we're trying to say to aliens hundreds of light years away "Hey! Look over here". But because we want to be able to see at night.

Seriously, read the whole thread which I linked. It goes into search strategies for alien cities, large scale mega-structures, even theoretical things like starships which warp space/time or wormholes as in the movie Interstellar.

originally posted by: ScientificRailgun
a reply to: JadeStar

There we go. I knew Ms. Science Lady could do it! Biomeicide.

Let's be friends now.

I'll always be your friend.