Water found on ‘Goldilocks’ planet

I don't mean to be a buzz-kill, but man is not going anywhere!

We can look at the stars all we want, but the human form of mankind isn't going anywhere but right here on Earth.

We beings are too fragile, too needy and too selfish, for long distance space travel. Robots maybe, but not humans.

Mankind will never soak its feet in the sea of a distant solar system. We just won't. It's physiologically impossible.

We're busy looking at the stars, but we don't even understand DNA yet. In order to travel "light year" distances we will have to be able to break down the human form into mass-less energy forms and then be able to re-assemble those forms hundreds of thousands of years from now. We have not even one iota of a concept of how to even begin doing this...yet we're building spaceships. It's like the old saying..."the cart before the horse".

Voyager 1 left planet earth over 44 years ago, and it hasn't even traveled ONE LIGHT YEAR from Earth!! Not one, not a single one! Voyager 1 will take another 400 CENTURIES to even exit our solar system. That's FOUR HUNDRED GENERATIONS!! Do you know what the date was 40,000 years ago??? It was 38,000 BC!!!!! (yes B.C) And even then it will still have to travel for THOUSANDS of YEARS to reach the next nearest star, at a measly 1.7 light years from Earth.

This planet is not one, not ten, but 111 light years from earth! Can you see the futility of this???

We could receive a message form them tomorrow which says the planet is pure Utopia, streets paved in gold and mountains made of diamonds...and by the time our response message reached them no one on Earth will be alive to even remember sending it. And, even if they responded back, 2 full generations of humans will have passed.

It's completely non-nonsensical!

All this BS about Quantum Physics is just a fantasy game. We humans will never know these laws, never be able to experience them...they simply will never apply to us mortal humans.

Star Trek was just a fantasy. It will never be real.

So what's the point?

Well, the point is, perhaps we should be figuring out how to survive right here on Earth! Because, we're not going anywhere...ever.

ETA - Oh, and if Mars was such a great place...then intelligent life would live there right now. Perhaps it did once, but it doesn't now, and there's probably a reason for that. So YAY...let's go to Mars! Mars isn't going to save Earth, only Earth is going to save Earth...or it won't. But either way, we're not going anywhere, not as a species anyway. Someone might go there some day, but the human race won't. Period. It just won't.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Pretty much this. I guess it's cool for humans to have space goals. Realistic ones. Obviously people who have fantasies of interstellar travel will always have them and will always be looking at possibilities though. It's probably better for humanity if the most ambitious science people are expending most of their "Utopia" energy on things that can absorb as much of that energy as they can throw at it and still get nowhere.

Utopia-minded people tend to make a real mess when they focus even a small amount of their energy on other people or goals here on earth. So maybe it isn't such a bad thing that they're trying to figure out how to achieve something that's impossible. Unfortunately, though, in their efforts, they will end up creating technologies that are infinitely more powerful than those they already have (such as the atomic bomb). And you know that's not gonna go well. The internet is already more powerful than most people can comprehend in ways that do not bode well for the future of humans.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

All this BS about Quantum Physics is just a fantasy game. We humans will never know these laws, never be able to experience them...they simply will never apply to us mortal humans.

Are you using a smart phone, laptop, or desktop?

Never mind. Doesn't matter. You are using quantum physics, no matter which.

I have to agree that a bunch of light years makes things highly problematic though.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

All this BS about Quantum Physics is just a fantasy game. We humans will never know these laws, never be able to experience them...they simply will never apply to us mortal humans.

Never mind. Doesn't matter. You are using quantum physics, no matter which.

Wrong. Quantum physics is only a theory and full of contradictions so FlyingClayDisk had it right and you are wrong.
Here are some synonyms for the word theory: conjecture, hypothesis, guess, hunch.

Now go Google something on quantum physics real quick like to make it seem like you're a learned person on the topic.

a reply to: 1point92AU

I'll let you do it.
Refer to the part about how transistors were invented, then get back to me.

The point about life elsewhere in the galaxy, or even the universe, is not that it adds a new destination to a future travel brochure, but it proves we are not alone. That is the point.

I don’t for one minute believe there are other humanoids somewhere in the universe, but I do hope there are other complex creatures and maybe some have advanced intelligence.

Knowing that complex life exists ‘out there’ would change everything.

a reply to: Phage

I just meant, as it relates to human space travel. I should have been more clear.

How frustrating. Being able to detect water but can't communicate with any potential life.

That's just annoying.

originally posted by: FamCore
a reply to: TerraLiga

Fascinating discovery! Hopefully nothing crazy has happened to that world in the last 111 years (am I correct that we are "looking" at this world in the past, since it's so far away?)

Right, and if they have a telescope pointed at us they are seeing the earth circa 1908.

originally posted by: Homefree
111 light years in 3 dimensional linear space.
We could possibly ride the curvature of space time and shorten that span.
I am gearing up to go fly-fishing on K2-18b.
I'm building my own spaceship.

NASA's budget last year was 20 Billion.
Facebook alone had revenue last year of 56 Billion, Google 136 Billion...

As a species we place much more value on cat video's and status updates than exploring the universe.

It's far overdue for us to stop effen around and invest some serious money in filling in the massive holes in our understanding of physics and see if we can't break some speed limits. We have 300-400 billion stars in our galaxy alone! And right now we estimate virtually all of them have planets orbiting them. Whatever created the universe would not clump so much potentially life sustaining material together without a way to migrate. We either stop effen around and get on it or we go extinct sooner or later.

I am excited about Alpha Centauri A and B....4 light years away. Even with today's technology we could get probes there in 20 years that could send back imagery and video in 4 years. A 25 year turn-around for potential imagery/footage/data of a neighboring solar system.

Experimental cosmologist Philip Lubin at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his colleagues previously calculated that a 10-kilometer-wide laser array orbiting the Earth, firing at 50- to 70-gigawatts, could propel a chip-like spacecraft weighing 1 gram, with a 1-meter-wide sail, to more than 25 percent of the speed of light with about 10 minutes of lasing, which means the craft could reach Mars in 30 minutes, and Alpha Centauri in about 20 years. Each "space-chip" would be a complete miniature spacecraft, loaded with cameras, power, navigation, communications and other systems, and this giant orbital array could launch roughly 40,000 of these probes per year.

www.popsci.com...

originally posted by: zilebeliveunknown

originally posted by: TerraLiga
The good news is that as it’s such a large planet the gravity will be higher and any creatures should be smaller!

Infinitely smaller due to enormous pressure.

I feel that's a big assumption to take. Our planet was once home to gigantic creatures.

You seem depressed, shine up brother.
Maybe you are correct, i don't believe the limit
I prefer to "pretend" that the long term destiny of our kind is at least possible.
even though not within scientific determinism as we understand it.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
I don't mean to be a buzz-kill, but man is not going anywhere!

mankind isn't going anywhere but right here on Earth.

I've been to Iowa, once. Whole place smell like pig manure.

originally posted by: Extorris

originally posted by: Homefree
We either stop effen around and get on it or we go extinct sooner or later.

It is very possible that we are arriving late to that punch bowl.

Knowing that Aliens exists and actually communicating with them, are two vastly different problems.
Just knowing they exist would bring me great joy.

The good news is that as it’s such a large planet the gravity will be higher and any creatures should be smaller!

a reply to: TerraLiga

There would not be a little blonde girl and 3 bears would it ….. ??

So apparently k2-18b is more like Neptune than Earth.

www.forbes.com...

a reply to: TerraLiga

The planet is named K2-18b. WHY? Give it a name. Atlas? Artemis? Tantalus? Come on guys.

originally posted by: zilebeliveunknown

originally posted by: TerraLiga
The good news is that as it’s such a large planet the gravity will be higher and any creatures should be smaller!

Infinitely smaller due to enormous pressure.

They could be big and extremely muscular. Imagine how muscular you would be if Jupiter was habitable and you spent your first 30 years up there.

a reply to: LSU2018

Too many to name them all.