Is there another Earth out there?

USA Today ^ | Staff Writer

[bedolido]

Forget the next Star Wars movie. The real space sequel guaranteed to capture public attention, astronomers say, is the discovery of another planet like Earth in our own starry neighborhood -- and it is likely to happen within a decade.

[Boiler Plate]

Somewhere in a parallel universe the Cubs win the World Series -------once ------ever.

At which point the inverse bang would occur and there would be nothing at all. Kinda like the refueling incident in Slaughterhouse Five

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Somewhere in a parallel universe the Cubs win the World Series -------once ------ever.

Don't want to let the air out of your balloon, but there isn't enough cork in the Universe for that to happen.

[Boiler Plate]

How could it be possibly be "Known" that there is infintite anything? The only way to know would be to count or measure the item in question and only when you couldn't count due to it being infinite could it then be known. Of course you have an infinite amout of time and counters to try and accomplish the task.

[Old Professer]

This reminds me, it's time to get my annual F.A.A. check done on my pig.

[AntiGuv]

It would be worth the effort if the sun were going to die soon.

Of its own accord, that would only be worth the effort of relocating to one other equivalent solar system; it would not inherently be worth the effort of exponential interstellar colonization.

[PatrickHenry]

that would only be worth the effort of relocating to one other equivalent solar system

Yes. But once it's done, presumably the technology then exists and is just lying around, not being used. So it's going to be cheaper the next time around, and the time after that ...

Anyway, the initial motivation for that scenario is a long way off.

[Boiler Plate]

Don't want to let the air out of your balloon, but there isn't enough cork in the Universe for that to happen.

True too true.

[AndrewC]

This seems appropriate

UFO Crash...

[AntiGuv]

The existence of the technology does not necessarily mean that it will be used, much less that it will be used in an exponential fashion. The fact of the matter is that sending a modest interstellar ark just to Alpha Centauri would require 150 billion billion joules of energy.

There is no guarantee whatsoever that such an undertaking will become economical as a practical course. At 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, the transportation bill would be $40 billion per pilgrim, and that's assuming a major breakthrough energy source, to begin with (one which does not add significant load itself).

How cheap does interstellar travel have to get before exponential colonization became a plausibility? For all we know, it's not even a physical possibility. We're not talking about transporting dozens or even hundreds, but probably tens of thousands if not millions - over & over.

[Boiler Plate]

Basically you would need a star sized energy source. Not too different than the ring world concept.

[PatrickHenry]

How cheap does interstellar travel have to get before exponential colonization became a plausibility? For all we know, it's not even a physical possibility. We're not talking about transporting dozens or even hundreds, but probably tens of thousands if not millions - over & over.

True. However, we could send unmanned robot ships, loaded with biological material, to seed other worlds. They could be slow, no problem. We'd never be around to see the results anyway, but it would be relatively cheap, and some percentage of them would be successful. It might have been the way things started here, before evolution kicked in, but that would mean some earlier species pulled off the trick a few billion years ago, and perhaps that's too early in the history of the universe for such a development. Anyway, it's one way to spread out. Rather remote, of course.

[B-Chan]

"NEW EARTH DISCOVERED:
Women, Minorities Hardest Hit"

- NYT, May 11, 20xx

[js1138]

robot placemarker

[Joe Hadenuf]

I have tried a few techniques, but eventually going to get an electronic focuser, and will use a couple of other techniques to stop the primary mirror from movement during critical focusing etc. Really looking forward to doing digital work. It's the future.

[B-Chan]

When we travel to the stars, we'll do it via wormholes or stargates. Why cross vast distances when you can eliminate them?

A trip via wormhole would be interesting. You'd ride the space elevator from the Earth's surface up to the spaceport at its top; transfer to a spaceliner; depart earth at high speed (accelerating all the way), and sail for a few days to wherever they find the wormhole or build the Stargate (inside an asteroid? Beyond Pluto?) The wormhole/stargate itself would probably look something like a big, empty-framework rectangle or cube or ring floating in space (the stars on the "other side" of the wormhole might be seen shining through the hole in the middle!). Your ship shoots towards the wormhole, zips through the middle of the framework -- and suddenly it's in the Tau Ceti system, eleven light-years out (this happens literally in no time; travel time through a wormhole would probably be near-zero)! Your liner then flips over, decelerates to match the speed of the target earthlike planet, and ties up at the dock at the top of the Tau Ceti space elevator (built by the first expedition through the wormhole). Total transit time (passenger) would be a few days.

Interestingly, space vessels used to fly through wormholes would not necessarily need powerful engines; they needen't even be spacecraft at all! For example, a captive wormhole might be dragged to or built in an orbit around the Earth. A space elevator could then be built from the surface of Earth to the "Wormhole Station" in orbit, where the "tracks" would be extended through the wormhole itself and connected to another space elevator built on the destination planety. This would create a hard, physical connection betwem Earth and the target world that would allow "trains" of passenger and freight cars to be taken up from Earth to the Wormhole Station, through the wormhole, and down to the planet on the other side. This would be a train trip through space -- a railway to the stars. Interstellar travel could become as easy as saying "I'd like to reserve a sleeper on the 9:50 22nd Century Limited, to Procyon, please."

To a society with wormhole travel, there's no need to build starships. In such a world, '"all space travel is local".

A great deal of scientific thought exists to support the idea that wormholes can exist and could be used for interstellar travel. Making one might be difficult, but I'm guessing that there are shortcuts sprinkled all throughout space and time already -- leftovers from the creation of the Universe -- that we might find and use.

[Joe Hadenuf]

I agree, as spacecraft and rockets as we know them are to primitive, way to slow, for anything except launching satellites, going to the lunar surface, or the planet Mars. If we are going to the stars and beyond, it wont be by any manned rocket. Even the speed of light is too slow.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Olaf Stapleton had some speculations on this. I read his stuff about 50 years ago so I can't remember the name of the novel (but Dover has reprinted it.)

[Joe Hadenuf]

Maybe there are some quotes or excerpts or the web. If you find any post it. I would be interested.

[Brett66]

If, on average, the number of star-fairing civilizations in a galaxy is one, then it's unlikely we'll see any other civilizations in our galaxy. We don't know enough numbers of the Drake equation to do anything but speculate. We need the starship Enterprise!

[xp38]

"The space people will contact us when they can make money by doing so." - David Byrne

Is the lead talking head saying the only aliens we get to meet are Ferengi?