Posted on 01/07/2020 10:58:25 PM PST by SunkenCiv
[R]esearchers using NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and the Spitzer Space Telescope have confirmed the presence of a nearby planet called TOI 700 d. The world sits comfortably in the habitable zone of its host star, and from what astronomers can tell, it appears to be a lot like Earth. The best part? It's relatively close.
Okay, so as we've all come to learn, "close" is a relative term when we're talking about objects in space. In the case of TOI 700 d, "close" means that the planet is hanging out at a distance of around 100 light-years. That's still an incredible distance that we have absolutely no way of traversing at the moment, but it's far closer than many other newly-discovered exoplanets...
The star that the Earth-alike is orbiting is quite a bit different from our own. It's much smaller and cooler, with only about 40% of the mass of our own Sun and surface temperatures of about half.
Exactly what the planet's surface looks like is still a mystery. Astronomers believe that the planet is tidally locked with it star, meaning that it's always showing its star the same "face," with one side of the planet always covered in light and the other in darkness.
It's an incredibly interesting discovery, but we'll have to wait for technology to catch up before we can say whether such a world would be worth visiting if that ever even becomes an option.
(Excerpt) Read more at bgr.com ...
Thank goodness for Earth’s magnetic field. We just about ought to have a holiday recognizing it.
Close is a relative term in any scale.
Festivus ?
No, that for the rest of us.
Can we move there and forbid liberals to join?
If we set up a base some place else and forbid the corrupted libs. They would go to war with us. Because of reasons
but the good thing is liberals don’t know how to fight other than sucker punches with limp wrists-
If anyone is going to go there, it'll be them..
But, before you know it, our galaxies will cross!
We can never go there, whine whine whine, so no one should have any interest in this article, or this discovery, or in this topic.
It’s like miles from anywhere.
I’d be willing to go...if there’s pizza.
Maybe He intended their inhabitants to come here.
It is a remarkable scientific advance just in the last 20 years that we can now detect exoplanets and even glean some information about them.
Obviously the big issue that will have to be solved next for us to explore further is the propulsion problem. Chemical rockets are just not fast enough to get anywhere. Even our most advanced ion engines are still much too slow. We need something that will allow our spacecraft to achieve at least some significant fraction of the speed of light.
How far is 5.865696E14?
Screw moving. Shoot them to Mars. THE RED PLANET FOR THE REDS!
Atomic bombs via Project Orion got the ships to theoretically go REAL fast. Problem is slowing them down IIRC.
But...where does space go?
Close is a relative term. Our furthest out space probe is about .75 light days out after 40 years’ travel.
Gosh, that sounds familiar.
Exactly -- this is more evidence that the Speed of Dark is faster than the Speed of Light.
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