Astronomers working from Chile discover Earth ‘clone’ in ‘our backyard’
Astronomers have found a new planet, the closest yet outside our solar system and just an astronomical stone's throw away at four light years, raising the chances of finding a habitable planet in Earth's neighbourhood.
Researchers say the new planet is too close to its sun to support known forms of life, with a surface temperature estimated at 1,200 degrees Celsius. But previous studies suggest that when one planet is discovered orbiting a sun, there are usually others in the same system.
The new Earth-sized planet, announced in science Journal Nature by Stephane Udry and Xavier Dumusque at the Geneva Observatory, orbits one of the suns in Alpha Centauri, roughly 25 trillion miles away.
“It's a landmark discovery because it's very low mass and it's our closest neighbour,” said Udry. “Its orbit is very close to its star and it must be much too hot for life as we know it but it may well be just one planet in a system of several.”
Commenting on the find, University of California astronomer Greg Laughlin said: “This is our back yard, so to find out that planet formation occurred there is just extraordinary.”
Since the discovery of the first exoplanets - those outside our solar system - in the early 1990s, more than 800 have been found but this one is the closest to Earth.
Getting there is extremely unlikely in the foreseeable future. Laughlin estimates it would take about 40,000 years to travel to the new planet with current propulsion technology.
It was detected using the HARPS instrument on a telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla site in Chile. The device is able to pick up tiny changes in the colour of the light coming from a host star as it wobbles under the gravitational influence of orbiting planets.
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and even has a few sun;s.
but so far, NO argies or CFK agents have been found.
the papers say , today it 4 light years away.
however far that is .?
the speed of light (the physical constant) is approximately 186,000 miles a second or 700 million miles an hour.
A light-year is the distance that light travels in one year. It's a long way! And four of them is even further!
Nothing can travel at more than the speed of light. However, it we could learn how to 'bend' or 'warp' space time and fold it so that the Earth and the new planet co-exist (almost) at the same point then travel to the new planet would be instantaneous.
That would be good, would it not?
80 years is a very long time to spend weightless in space and no-one has yet got anywhere near 5% of the speed of light (35 million MPH). Remember that the energy required increases as the square of the velocity. That alone is a daunting consideration.
I hope and trust that science will eventually get to resolve long distance space travel but my money would be on warping space time, not that anybody alive now will ever see it for themselves.
There are a few seemingly possible ideas floating about but they need fundamental work doing to get near to identifying an actual solution.
No need to ruin a new world...
Yes, I already know about Orion and other promising concepts as well.
But the problem is put into perspective here:
Voyager 1 is departing the Solar System at a speed of 39,000 miles per hour.
Voyager 2 is departing the Solar System at a speed of 35,000 miles per hour.
Eventually, the Voyagers will pass other stars:
Voyager 1, in 40,000 years, will float by within 1.6 light years (9.3 trillion miles) of a star known as AC+79 3888 in the constellation Camelopardalis.
Voyager 2, in 296,000 years, will sail within 4.3 light years (25 trillion miles) of Sirius, which today is the brightest star in Earth's sky.
Note the 4.3 light years!!
I respectively suggest you recalculate the figures that led you to 80 years.
www.spacetoday.org/SolSys/Voyagers20years.html
it was most interesting.
p/s
so still hope for a time machine then .lol.
No, sorry, there is NO chance of that.
The space (see what I said here) on MercoPress precludes me from explaining why that is so, but there are very good grounds to make that statement.
who knows what the future will bring.
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