Posted on 08/07/2009 5:27:20 PM PDT by KevinDavis
NASA's orbiting Kepler space telescope has detected the atmosphere on a previously discovered exoplanet—a planet beyond Earth's solar system that orbits its own star.
The telescope collected the data from HAT-P-7, about 1,000 light years from Earth.
NASA said the find demonstrates Kepler's ability to deliver precise information on some of the galaxy's most distant objects. The capability could eventually help researchers discover Earth-like planets in other solar systems.
(Excerpt) Read more at informationweek.com ...
Really been looking forward to this one. New Horizons is another mission I’m eager to see produce.
Must be cool to father a theory that can never be falsified in your lifetime.
When we do find an earthlike planet I’m going to be laughing at luddites like for a long time.. People like has been proven wrong over and over...
Very astute post
Meanwhile, on Hatten är din...
Huh. I think your is missing some .
I wonder what the “most likely azimuth” is from Earth. That is the closest stars, with the best possibility of habitable planets, and the “most of them”, all put together.
The reason being that this direction would be taken by a satellite once a matched pair quantum communication system has been devised.
Looking like an armored ball, with an ion drive propulsion system, it would stay buttoned up until it was far out of the solar system, and had run out of propellant. Then the ball would open up to reveal a telescope that would have a much better view of things outside of all the interference found in the solar system.
LOL I love that video at the right time.
I don’t think that would have ion drive, rather what we use today, and would take 25 years or so to reach the edge of our solar system. At that, how long does it take for Viking to send a message back?
If something on the telescope doesn’t work when it gets there, there’s no way we could send somebody to fix it, or even an automated bot.
First of all, ion drives can give speeds about four times faster than chemical drives, though it takes them longer to accelerate. Second, that is why a quantum pair communication device is so important, but only if it could provide faster than light communications, using spooky action at a distance.
But, if you got there, and the telescope didn’t work, that would ruin its primary mission, but just by being there and able to communicate means that a number of other observations and experiments could be made.
If you want communications like that, talk with Orson Scott Card.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansible
Spooky action at a distance has to some extent been shown to not be able to violate the speed of light, at least while carrying information. However, this is usually expressed as a violation of causality, which may be over defining the term in relation to special relativity.
That is, travel through a wormhole would not violate special relativity, and thus causality, because it is not traveling through normal space. So if spooky action at a distance happened not in normal space, then causality and special relativity would not be violated.
So “faster than light” communication would not be possible with one such phenomenon, but could be possible with two.
Almost by definition, spooky action does not take place in normal space. There is no interaction between a pair that we can observe. But since there is no speed of light violation, we must assume that the pair is using a “parallel space” that has the same “distance” between points as does normal space.
Just as importantly, the “wormhole” connecting a pair is stable. The act of dividing the pair stretches this stable wormhole out like a rubber tube.
So what we need is to find some pair that has a stable wormhole whose “distance” between the ends of the wormhole is shorter than normal space. In normal space it would be unobservable, but apparently faster than light, but it would not violate causality, even from our normal space point of view.
It is if you are a luddite..
You mean like if someone ground a mirror to incorrect specs? Nah, it'd never happen.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.