Direct Observation: Finding Earth-Sized Exoplanets and Their Habitability

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In summary, it seems that, if we want to send a probe to an exoplanet at a point when technology is only able to attain 1/100 of light speed, we would need to use an orbiting telescope like Hubble. It would be a long waiting time, and I think it's a good idea to plant the seeds of life on a planet where there is water and where no evidence of life has been detected already.
  • #1
meteor
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To conquer the Universe

I think that when we will want to make our first interestellar voyage, we will not have the technology of achieve even velocities of a tenth part of light speed. Then, there are two options
a)Send a small number of persons, hibernated (in the style of Clark's "2001, space oddissey")
b)Send a huge spaceship (In the style of other's Clark novel "Rendezvous with Rama")where, say, can travel thousandths of people that reproduct, and then someone will arrive
Which option to choose?
It seems that the first candidate have to be the 3-system of alpha centauri, because is the nearer(4.2 a.l), but don't have any planet.
Barnard's star has a planet, but it's a bit more far away (6 a.l). Which have to be the first star to travel to? (if you prefer another star, tell me)
And, if in a planet, we find living things, in a early stage of development (for example things like fishes, reptils or little mammals) we should try to not interfere and let the echosystem go its way, or should we try to terraform the planet?
May the force be with you!
 
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  • #2
I'll treat your post as an "inspirational intellectual tidbit" and not a "debate". Some people treated my former type posts and latter, and made me a bit "ughy".

I would say that, knowing NASA's plans on concepts well, manned missions are rare and only used when totally necessary to achieve and object which seems VERY important.

But let's say we're at that point. I would say that point would only be, for a mission this far from home, if we were going to look at life. Meaning if we had sent un manned mission and it saw life, and we wanted humans to go and learn details.

Thus going to the second star you mentioned which would have planets that here we will assume life has been found on, would be the more NASA-like decision.

It's hard to pick which option would most likely occur. The first requirees a good bit of properly tested technology, but it makes more sense as the team would be trained.

The second probably will never happen. NASA has to train people very well before they go. These "space born" humans would not only be untrained, but they would not be psychologically prepared, and who knows maybe they'll just not perform any of the procedures. A million othe rproblems would occur. Perhaps they're retarded, and surely being conceibed and born in space wouldn't work.

So I'd say it'd be best to assert that technology would be ready, rather than all these millions of problems with the second one.

Sci fi often becomes reallity. although sci fi writers always think things will change MUCH faster than they have, you know?

Your reference to 2001 helps this claim, they were so much more advanced, we haven't even put a man on MARS yet!

As far as messing with the biosphere there. You use the word "should" which is a word i stay away from. It implies there's either

1. some universal answer to it, some universal rules to what "should and shouldnt" take place.

2. Or, just that ones opinion on this totally opinionated matter should take power over others, which in the area of NASA which should be (other isn't 100%) logic orientated, this could cause a problem.

I think that it'd be best to cause the least amount of changes to the biosphere as possible, only because of the best logical reason for that, which is so we can learn more and more about this biosphere as it is without us interfering.

Nice post, I like space because it's inspiring and humbling.
 
  • #3


Originally posted by meteor
I think that when we will want to make our first interestellar voyage, we will not have the technology of achieve even velocities of a tenth part of light speed. Then, there are two options...

That sounds right. Suppose we want to start sending probes to exosolar planets at a point when technology only is able to attain 1/100 of light speed.

What long waiting times!

There might be a nice planet 20 LY away that we want to send a robot probe to. Just a small robot craft to check it out and send back some data on it. Ion-drive, say.

At 1/100 c it takes 2000 years to get there!

Meteor, do you think a small spacecraft could be equiped to
plant the seeds of single-cell photosynthesizing life on an exoplanet (by exoplanent I mean one orbiting another star)?

I like the idea of planting the seeds of life on planets where there is liquid water and where no evidence of life has been detected already. I do not see why sending humans is essential to the job.

I think orbiting telescopes like Hubble are going to get
much better. Maybe using interference (optical interferometry)
between a number of telescopes separated from each other
by some distance----to increase resolution. Perhaps being located
quite far from the Earth too. I think it will be possible to detect earth-size exoplanets with these improved telescopes and even to tell if they have water. Right from here, without going to them.

I think it is an obligation to plant life in other parts of our galaxy.
It is not even a "conquest" but a debt we owe to nature.
Originally posted by meteor
I think that when we will want to make our first interestellar voyage, we will not have the technology of achieve even velocities of a tenth part of light speed. Then, there are two options
a)Send a small number of persons, hibernated (in the style of Clark's "2001, space oddissey")
b)Send a huge spaceship (In the style of other's Clark novel "Rendezvous with Rama")where, say, can travel thousandths of people that reproduct, and then someone will arrive
Which option to choose?
It seems that the first candidate have to be the 3-system of alpha centauri, because is the nearer(4.2 a.l), but don't have any planet.
Barnard's star has a planet, but it's a bit more far away (6 a.l). Which have to be the first star to travel to? (if you prefer another star, tell me)
And, if in a planet, we find living things, in a early stage of development (for example things like fishes, reptils or little mammals) we should try to not interfere and let the echosystem go its way, or should we try to terraform the planet?
May the force be with you!
 
  • #4
Well, after reading your posts, I think that there are two possibilities:
A)Before whe reach the technology to go to another star, we receive a signal (with project SETI, or other) that is interpreted inequivocally as made by some type of intelligence. In this case, I think that we will send a few humans to that planet(hibernating)
B)If we don't receive any signal, surely we will send robots. In this case is not necessarily to send only a stellar ship, we can, for example, send ten ships to ten different stars at the same time(it is not recomendable to send robots with humans in the same ship, perhaps there's some HAL infiltrated)
Well, in case A, who would like to enroll in the travel? I sure!
 
  • #5
Greetings !

I think that before we actually send
manned or unmanned expeditions to any
other star system we will already have
the tachnology to observe the planets in
that system directly to the level that
we will be able to find (if they are out
there) planets that are habitable (only
minor adjustments possibly required for
life-support) for us. I think that we
will go to those planets first (if we're
still around at that stage at all) and
the major terraforming part will come at
a much later stage in our development
(though we might practice it in our
own star-system relativly soon).

It is also quite possible that we will
use genetic engeneering to adept to many
"nearly" habitable worlds by considrably
changing ourselves (if we don't turn into
a hive cybernetic mind or something by then :wink:).

I would not really like to speculate on how
we will treat intellegent or non-intellegent
life if we meet it a century or more from now.
I wouldn't even like to speculate on who or what
we'll be in a century or more. I do know that
if something like that happened today we'd
have those local life-forms nearly incstinct
in a heartbeat and sold in, probably even legal,
animal stores.

Live long and prosper.
 
  • #6
I remember reading an article in Astronomy Magazine about colonizing robots, where we send a spaceship to some designated planet and the robots mine the planet for metals. They then build a robot factory and make more robots, then send them to other planets where they colonize in the same way, thereby spreading the human legacy and many robots throughout the universe. I know it was an article within the past two years, but that's all I remember.
 
  • #7
Originally posted by Eaglesyfon
I remember reading an article in Astronomy Magazine about colonizing robots, where we send a spaceship to some designated planet and the robots mine the planet for metals. They then build a robot factory and make more robots, then send them to other planets where they colonize in the same way, thereby spreading the human legacy and many robots throughout the universe. I know it was an article within the past two years, but that's all I remember.

Hahahaha - if this happened then guess what the entire universe of life would eventually refer to humans as??

Planetary Spammers!Hahaha!

Sounds like those "pass this on to ten friends" emails. heh
 
  • #8
Originally posted by Eaglesyfon
I remember reading an article in Astronomy Magazine about colonizing robots, where we send a spaceship to some designated planet and the robots mine the planet for metals. They then build a robot factory and make more robots, then send them to other planets where they colonize in the same way, thereby spreading the human legacy and many robots throughout the universe. I know it was an article within the past two years, but that's all I remember.

I can only see us doing this if the 'bots also do some terraforming or at least habitat-building. I don't think we'd send them out just so they could send out more. After all, look at what happened to the Cylons!

I think Neil Armstrong had the right of it, "man must explore". Whatever else we may do, we will eventually send people. We (the human race) cannot not go.
 
  • #9
In the sake of truth, the planet around Barnard's star is suspected but not confirmed. Then, the nearer exoplanet pass to be the one around Epsilon eridani, that is a star that is 10.5 l.y. from the earth. It's a planet the size of Jupiter, so poor hope to find life
Here's a list of all the planetary systems found
www.princeton.edu/~willman/planetary_systems
 
  • #10
Originally posted by meteor
In the sake of truth, the planet around Barnard's star is suspected but not confirmed. Then, the nearer exoplanet pass to be the one around Epsilon eridani, that is a star that is 10.5 l.y. from the earth. It's a planet the size of Jupiter, so poor hope to find life
Here's a list of all the planetary systems found
www.princeton.edu/~willman/planetary_systems

Dont rule out the possibility that a planet the size of Jupiter could
have moons with a comfortable gravity.

The thing to look for is that the orbit not be highly elliptical---better a nearly circular orbit----the right distance from the star.
The temperature should be fairly stable and in the right range.

BTW someone seemed to me to have the right idea, drag,
before too long telescopes will probably be good enough to
study exoplanets---and not just jupiter-size ones---in some
degree of detail

Improved telescopes outside the Earth's atmosphere are one of the premium uses of space---one of the really major opportunities it offers in the near term.
 
  • #11
Yeah, but it's not only about telescopic power. A lot of methods can be used to find planets, like (I forgot what it's called) where astronomers block out the parent star and use one or more telescopes to try to spot the planets. It apparently works extremely well, but it's supposed to be a little tough to do.
 
  • #12
Greetings !

Those are indirect observation methods Eaglesyfon.
Most of them can not or are very difficult
to use to find the smaller possibly habitable
planets we really wnat to look for.

What we need is direct observation - both to
find them and determine their characteritics.
I believe that within the next half a century
we should be able to discover a great deal
of Earth sized extrasolar planets using direct
observation. NASA plans the first mission to
attempt this within about a decade or less from
now and as far as I remember they'll be using an
orbital array of relativly small but very powerful
telescopes working together (aimed at the same
star-systems) to look directly for such small planets.

Live long and prosper.
 

1. What is the main goal of conquering the Universe?

The main goal of conquering the Universe is to gain knowledge and understanding of the vastness of space and to expand human civilization beyond Earth.

2. How do scientists plan to achieve this conquest?

Scientists plan to achieve this conquest through advancements in technology and space exploration, such as developing faster and more efficient spacecrafts and conducting research on habitable planets.

3. What are some potential challenges in conquering the Universe?

Some potential challenges in conquering the Universe include limited resources, long-distance space travel, and the unknown dangers of outer space.

4. What are the potential benefits of conquering the Universe?

The potential benefits of conquering the Universe include discovering new resources and habitable planets, advancing scientific knowledge, and potentially finding new forms of life.

5. How can the conquest of the Universe impact Earth and human society?

The conquest of the Universe can have a significant impact on Earth and human society by providing opportunities for resource acquisition, expanding human knowledge and understanding, and potentially leading to the colonization of other planets.

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