Posted on 08/13/2016 8:51:10 PM PDT by ckilmer
The hunt for exoplanets has been heating up in recent years. Since it began its mission in 2009, over four thousand exoplanet candidates discovered by the Kepler mission, several hundred of which have been confirmed to be “Earth-like” (i.e. terrestrial). And of these, some 216 planets have been shown to be both terrestrial and located within their parent star’s habitable zone (aka. “Goldilocks zone”).
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
Who would have thought we would land on the moon 100 years ago?
Do you really want to go through a worm hole with one of those aliens? There are far nicer ones around. Look for a negative blood type. Just my theory.
One thing I noticed recently while reading an article discussing recent developements in ion and magnetic propulsion is that no one is considering the safety requirements that are going to need to be built into things that move in the solar system at speeds measuring in the hundreds or thousands of miles per second.
If you have an automobile mass object moving towards earth at several thousand miles per second you are going to have to have automatic destruct systems built in that will essentially vaporize the craft once it breaches a specified velocity and distance zone. If you don’t you will have the potential for an epic impact event.
If you start talking about speeds measuring fractions/percentages of C you’re going to need to push that safety zone out a few million miles. Things going that fast will do exotic stuff, like pass through the atmosphere like it’s not there and liquefy square miles of crust or vaporize cubic miles of water.
Glad you caught that.
I came up with almost 25 trillion miles.
186000x60x60x24x365
x4.25
And you still have the same mass of vapor moving at the same speed. At those speeds the state of the matter doesn't real make any difference. You will still impart the same kinetic energy and momentum to the target (earth) maybe spread out over a larger area, but this wouldn't necessarily be a good thing.
If we ever do get to Mars there will be a beer commercial where TMIMITW welcomes them....
Yes, but the mass of vapor/plasma/tiny particles would probably be handled by the upper atmosphere then, akin to solar flares. That would probably factor into the distance calculation.
I forget the author off hand, but there is a great series, Star Marines, where we strike a heavy blow against a ridiculous foe (essentially responsible for the Fermi paradox in our Galaxy) by transiting an older sub light starship through a gate into a system containing one of their major hubs. The cargo modules contain 50,000 tons of sand mined from Mars which is dispersed en route after the transit. The author did a great job describing the theoretical results.
That series was one of the best Sci Fi works I’d read in a while.
It also could reach speeds of 10,000 km/s, which would get it to Alpha Centauri in 133 Earth years. With time dilation on the craft itself that would be whittle down to about 6 years, one way.
Project Orion (nuclear propulsion)
And using a huge light sail instead, powered by a 100 megawatt laser, such as with the Breakthrough Starshot, could reach speeds of 100-million-mile-per-hour. This would reach Alpha Centauri in 20 years.
Really depends on how diffuse. Once you get up to even orbital speeds the material strength of what you hit (of what hits you) doesn't really matter for example just at orbital speeds the damage from tiny things is surprising. Now if you multiply that speed by 50, you multiply the energy by 2500; you can imagine what the result would be
If you get up to relativistic speeds you approach 50% of the E = MC2 formula. A large meteorite going at orbital speed supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs, an object 1/10,000th the mass would only have to be going 100 times as fast to release the same amount of energy (energy goes up as the square of the velocity) and it wouldn't matter if it were a cloud of gas or a solid object. And then there's the density. The solar wind which you mentioned does indeed go really fast, but its density is so low currently around 3 particles /cc that it doesn't penetrate or do any damage. 100 kg of something like carbon would have to be uniformly dissipated into 400,000,000,000 cubic miles to reach the same low density of the solar wind
The easiest way is to just have Dr. Smith hijack whatever NASA comes up with.
Thanks for that brilliant response.
I lay some of the blame on The First Family of Outer Space: The Robinsons.
400,000,000,000 cubic miles is a sphere 9141 miles in diameter ( I had to calculate it - smaller than I expected.)
if like me you’re the average age of most freepers it won’t happen in your life time.
I’m hoping that low earth orbit tourist travel will be available at a cost below 10k sometime in the next 15 years. I’d like to do that before I get too old for that.
I’ll crack 80 in 17 years. By that time, I probably won’t be fit enough to stand the g’s.
Nope, Venus.
From the perspective of someone looking from outside the solar system, Venus is Earth’s twin. Some size. Same mass. Almost the same orbit. If it were not for Venus’ lack of a magnetic core and a moon Venus might actually be habitable.
My point is that any “Earth like” planets we see outside our solar system are more likely Venus like.
Especially how they were able to do it all using slide rules and room sized super computers with far less computational power than any smartphone.
I am older than you, but you are older than my husband. LOL!
I have been looking forever for the island in Florida where some young man (turned old man) built a home for his beloved. He built everything by magnets! It was an unbelievable episode by Georgio Tsukakis. I personally think that magnets are the answer to a lot of our questions. Unfortunately, that man failed to leave any instructions.
My dad taught me how to use a slide rule. They were so awesome before computers. We have come such a long way in such a short time.
One can certainly understand the attraction.
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