This rocky planet is in another solar system 137 light-years away
From millions of light-years away, we can only see this distant world as a dark dot
🤔
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
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Haha probably meant to write "miles" the second time
Which is funny because that would have been even more inaccurate. "Millions of light years" is off by a factor of 15,000 or more. "Millions of miles" is off by a factor of 400,000,000 or more (2 million miles is 0.00000034 light years).
Reading your comment is the most I have ever felt the "wow, space is incomprehensibly large" feeling.
You might think it's a long way down the street to the chemists, bur that's just peanuts to space
I guess you could argue it's many many millions of miles, doesn't have to exclude the total being in the billions, trillions or beyond.
Though now I'm trying to think if there is any unit of measurement that it would be literal millions of away. Light seconds maybe?
There's ~31 million seconds in a year, so that's getting closer.
Hmm so that overshoots a little into billions of light seconds.
I've got it: millions of light minutes away! (70ish million if my math is right)
I don’t get it. We found lots of planets, including super earths in goldilock zone. What makes this planet unique to deserve a separate article? The article does not explain that.
Those other planets were jerks. This one's cool.
If it’s cool, it isn’t in Goldilocks zone.
It’s in Goldilocks’ cooler sister’s zone.
I beg to differ. The baby bear's porridge was too cold. I posit that the mama bear's just right porridge was cool.
I regret that the more accurate "Mama Bear Zone" wasn't the term that became popular, instead of naming it after the character who sampled the whole range of temperatures.
Some were hot before they were cool. That should mean something.
Because it generates views
What if NASA just makes this stuff up to get more funding? .
NASA scientist: See that dot?
US Government: Where? There?
NASA scientist: No. The other one.
US Government: That?
NASA scientist: Yuuuup. Totally a Super-Earth.
US Government: Really?
NASA scientist: Dude. Trust me, bro.
US Government: (sighs) Make a color computer render to show the press by Thursday.
. pops champagne cork
EDIT: WOW... people seriously need the /s for this? Damn. This was complete sarcasm.
That's a key component of the flat earth ideology. They are idiots. Don't be an idiot.
Nasa is not the only space agency on earth. They communicate and verify the data.
Also the data is public. Anyone can go look at the data and if they have good enough science and math skills they can get to the same answer.
Independent astronomers and agencies and other countries verify this stuff, so it'd be a complicated conspiracy.
Cool, how long until we can move there?
Ugh so fucking long unfortunately. I kind of doubt squishy biological humans will ever make it to another star system, we are so much closer to immortal machine minds that can make the trip much more conveniently than we are to interstellar travel.
Maybe they'll create some humans in other star systems when they get there, as an art project or something.
Yeah humans being built on the spot is the best shot for us existing in other systems. Maybe if we have a reallllly pro-biological human ideology by that point it'll be something like an automated probe arriving in the system, building an industrial base, and then birthing and raising a new generation of biological humans to inhabit the system.
I'm in the middle of reading A City of Mars, by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, who goes over their take on the feasibility of long term habitation off world. Short answer is, it's going to be a long time. There are a lot of questions, physically, biologically, legally, logistically, unanswered. At best, it's going to be like building a cathedral. It's a project for multiple generations.
I also like watching Issac Arthur's videos on YT, and fantasize about the future. He gives a more positive spin on stuff like that.
Yeah thinking about the giant challenges of building a settlement on Mars really puts in perspective the much much much harder problem of sending people to another star system.
I managed to grab a TESS poster at the last Goddard Space Flight Center open house. It's hanging on the wall behind me, and it's awesome to read some news about it because I got to meet some of the folks on the team.
They found it in a pool of water that dries up when you try to drink it?