NASA discovers seven Earth-like planets, some in habitable zone, just 40 light-years away

Shawn Knight

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NASA on Wednesday announced the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a single star. Even more exciting is the belief that three of these planets are located within their star’s habitable zone, the area around a star in which conditions are best to foster liquid water on a rocky planet.

The solar system is located around 40 light-years (235 trillion miles) from Earth in the constellation Aquarius. While that may sound far away, it is actually relatively close in terms of celestial bodies.

The discovery isn’t entirely new. In May of 2016, researchers using The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile announced they had discovered three planets in the exoplanet system dubbed TRAPPIST-1.

Since that time, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope along with help by several ground-based telescopes including the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope confirmed the existence of two of these planets and discovered five additional planets, thus increasing the number of known planets in the system to seven.

Based on the estimated densities of the planets, it is likely that all of them are rocky. All of them orbit closer to their star than Mercury does to our own sun. What’s more, they’re so close to each other that someone standing on one planet could likely see geographical features or clouds on other planets with the naked eye.

The James Webb Space Telescope scheduled to launch in 2018 should provide astronomers with many more answers regarding TRAPPIST-1 by being able to detect the chemical fingerprints of water, oxygen, methane, ozone and other components of a planet’s atmosphere.

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Great, another vacation spot to add to my overflowing bucket list ......
I'm kind of sad that humanity wont be able to reach any significant fraction of light speed before I die. Perhaps my grandchildren will get to see that kind of thing. At those speeds relativity would kick in and it may only feel like a few years to the people going. Hopefully we will figure out a way to use quantum entanglement as a means of communication so it wont take ~100+ years to see what's out there. It'd be nice to see humanity successfully work together on an inter-generational project like this. Hopefully we wont kill ourselves first.
 
Great all we need now is to work out how to propel a manned (sorry no woman :D) craft at light speed otherwise this is pointless news. Our current fastest space craft travelling at 36,000mph would take 745,180 years to get there...

Compare that to the speed of light which is 669,600,000 mph and we are far away. But even then you only get there in 40 years (actually 40 years and 6 months). If you want to get there in a reasonable time you would need to travel 26,784,000,000 (equiv roughly to the fictional warp factor 7) yes that right almost 27 billion miles an hour and even then it would take you 40 days.


Sadly the speed of light is simply too slow for space travel and we are centuries off mastering and understanding space to potentially exploit it (ps all that you hear about ion drivers, and fission power is all still relativity slow).
 
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Great all we need now is to work out how to propel a manned (sorry no woman :D) craft at light speed otherwise this is pointless news. Our current fastest space craft travelling at 36,000mph would take 745,180 years to get there...

Compare that to the speed of light which is 669,600,000 mph and we are far away. But even then you only get there in 40 years (actually 40 years and 6 months). If you want to get there in a reasonable you would need to travel 26,784,000,000 (equiv roughly to the fictional warp factor 7) yes that right almost 27 billion miles an hour and even then it would take you 40 days.


Sadly the speed of light is simply too slow for space travel and we are centuries off mastering and understanding space to potentially exploit it (ps all that you ear about ion drivers, and fission power is all still relativity slow).

At least it is close enough to attempt a communication. We could beam there something, like a parcel with Belgian chocolate perhaps :)
 
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If there's water on any of these close-together planets, I wonder what the tides are like.

Well, first you must wonder if they have any moons. How big are the moon/s and how close to the planet it/they are/is. THEN you can wonder about the tides, otherwise, they will be very uneventful if there is no moon.
 
Great, another vacation spot to add to my overflowing bucket list ......
I'm kind of sad that humanity wont be able to reach any significant fraction of light speed before I die. Perhaps my grandchildren will get to see that kind of thing. At those speeds relativity would kick in and it may only feel like a few years to the people going. Hopefully we will figure out a way to use quantum entanglement as a means of communication so it wont take ~100+ years to see what's out there. It'd be nice to see humanity successfully work together on an inter-generational project like this. Hopefully we wont kill ourselves first.
Quantum entanglement as a form of transportation would be better
 
If there's water on any of these close-together planets, I wonder what the tides are like.

Well, first you must wonder if they have any moons. How big are the moon/s and how close to the planet it/they are/is. THEN you can wonder about the tides, otherwise, they will be very uneventful if there is no moon.

If the planets themselves are close enough to see geographical features from one to the other you will have awesome tides.
 
Great, another vacation spot to add to my overflowing bucket list ......
I'm kind of sad that humanity wont be able to reach any significant fraction of light speed before I die. Perhaps my grandchildren will get to see that kind of thing. At those speeds relativity would kick in and it may only feel like a few years to the people going. Hopefully we will figure out a way to use quantum entanglement as a means of communication so it wont take ~100+ years to see what's out there. It'd be nice to see humanity successfully work together on an inter-generational project like this. Hopefully we wont kill ourselves first.

I hate to say it, but I think humanity will be gone before we even figured that out.
 
Not only that for all we know these planets were blown up yesterday by the deathstar but we wouldn't know that until 2057 by which time we won't care about other planets as 90% earths population would have killed each other and religious orientated wars.
 
Great all we need now is to work out how to propel a manned (sorry no woman :D) craft at light speed otherwise this is pointless news. Our current fastest space craft travelling at 36,000mph would take 745,180 years to get there...

Compare that to the speed of light which is 669,600,000 mph and we are far away. But even then you only get there in 40 years (actually 40 years and 6 months). If you want to get there in a reasonable time you would need to travel 26,784,000,000 (equiv roughly to the fictional warp factor 7) yes that right almost 27 billion miles an hour and even then it would take you 40 days.


Sadly the speed of light is simply too slow for space travel and we are centuries off mastering and understanding space to potentially exploit it (ps all that you hear about ion drivers, and fission power is all still relativity slow).

Warp 8 would only 14 days to get there... woohoo! (http://www.anycalculator.com/warpcalculator.htm)
 
As long as the planets spin they would still have a 'solar' tide, plus there would be weird tidal effects when lapping or being lapped by another planet.
 
Can we get some real CGI around here? Some of this stuff is so pathetic, I'd almost offer to do it right for free. Almost.

With NASA's budget, you'd think at least one person on staff knew how to use Maya.
 
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