NASA big announcement.

What you think the big NASA announcement will be this time. They claim there something big Discovery Beyond Our Solar System and announcing it today. 1PM eastern time. If it like the big mars announcement it be disappointing.

Any way I can remember something about a big object they discovered last year beyond our solar system so I hope it something to do with that.

"Ehem. We're all doomed..."

Maybe they found new objects beyond the Kuiper Belt orbiting the Sun.

I was just browsing the Chandra Observatory web site..... Some nice *older* composite images.....

Possibly an Earth-like planet, other then that, they can kiss it!!!!

It will likely be something that people with a interesting in science and outer space will find remarkable, but the rest of the world will simply respond to it with "Lame!, Why isn't it a discovery of those Predator aliens from the movies?"

because gary busey covered it up

6 earth like planets in a nearby system. Surface temps between 1-100C.

Trumps people have returned to take him to his home planet.

its 7 not 6.

They are all in the habitable zone and like four look very similar to earth.

NASA tends to... i wont say overstate their findings, but they just a different view on how impacting it is to what we know than the average public.

Awesome announcement. With that many solid planets and so many in the goldilocks zone the chances of finding a habitable planet for life went up significantly. Now to wait until JWST launches and we can more closely observe the planets, even being able to detect the molecular makeup of the planet.

Well, they view it as very important because it completely changes the mathematics possibilities of how much life is in the universe. Known life that comes from specific circumstances i should say. If we end up finding life on Europa (IMO i think we will), that completely changes everything.

http://www.space.com/35784-trappist-1-earth-size-exoplanets-pictures-gallery.html

If you haven't been keeping track, essentially we're all doomed

Yup. The difference in enthusiasm tends to vary quite a bit between scientists and average people.

Coincidently, as I learnt more about science, the more fascinating it got.

Hummm... was it the sun that potentially had a dyson sphere around it?

I hate to go with conspiracy ideas, but that is definitely very interesting given what they've eliminated.

So it is seven, i dont know why all the pictures have six. But its seven. Anyway, if those mark up images are accurate in any way, it looks like b and c would be dead. d, e and f would be very close to earth like conditions and G is questionable. Im not sure where the seventh one is, if its beyond G its probably less likely to host life of any kind but is still in that habitable zone.

I tend to take this kind of news with a grain of salt, there's so much that could interfere with those images across these distances that for all we know we could be looking at a bunch of marbles.

They haven't been visually imaged at all. They measure both the shift of the star as it wobbles (because a star not only affects planets but also vice-versa) and the spectral dip as a planet passes in front of the star (from our viewpoint).

I know that's why it makes it even less likely. I'm not saying it can't be true, but how can you 100 percent sure at such distances.

Math, being what it is, is very precise. Any anomaly such as an obstruction or lensing would be so far from realistic values that it would be obvious it does not originate with the target of observation.

You got a point there, but when you're talking about gravity and space, not everyone agrees on the same math. Not to mention we have no way of checking the math either, since the distance is too far.

We can check the math. We have errmm...8...planets right here to test on.

We know how much mass our local planets have, and how much mass the sun has. So by observing right here in our own solar system we have 8 varying masses to measure its effects on the Sun.

And the ongoing argument about gravity isn't at all about its effect, but about its nature. Its effect is well understood, we just don't know if gravity is an intrinsic aspect of spacetime (due to warping) or if gravity has its own boson (theoretical: graviton)

It really is an amazing find to see more than one goldilocks zoned planet within the same system like they did.

flat earther!!!!!! defend the flat earth nasa.[= Never.A.Straight.Answer.....

Amazing... can't wait to see what else we can find out. I love this stuff.

How long be for they blame Global warming.

@kod:

I tried looking for it but cant find it. They said it was more like a structure then a planet or sun. Never heard anything since.

I hope we get extinct before reaching those planets and destroying them. The human race sucks, leave them for a better, more intelligent species.

Awww. Bad day at school? The other kids picking on ya?

Nope, watching the state of the world as it is now and how stupidity rules the day does the trick.

it really isn't as bad as you make it out to be

The millions of people and species that are going to die and suffer in the few next decades thanks to us fucking up this planet disagree. Of course some of us won't be so affected since we are privileged but so many will.

Wow, this is pretty amazing. Now if they can only figure out how to freeze us till we get there in our space ships !

humans currently have zero capacity to destroy our planet. shit, i don't think we even have the ability to destroy all life on our planet ( an exponentially easier thing btw ) even if we made a concerted effort to, which we are not.

for sure, our shortsightedness as a species will **** some stuff up along the way as it always has but the overall trajectory of our species has been one of improvement to our existence

on topic, this exoplant stuff is very interesting. the fact that they can detect wobble and tiny perturbations in brightness due to transit on stars thousands of ly away is amazing. we've only been actively searching for a relatively short time ( ~10+ years ) and we've found literally thousands of them. it's pretty fucking humbling.

The great thing about it is this is science, not an opinion poll. Science does not care who likes or agree's with what, it simply relies on data.

When you talk about scientific theories up for debate and that are being challenged, you're typically talking about things that are not applied here because of that very fact, because they have not been proven right or wrong.

I suspect it was the potential Dyson Sphere.

This is actually one of those things that is more of a limitation of technology and not knowledge.

I agree. It's comforting whenever we make strides to actually prove we're not alone(which I never doubted).

When people take issue with "destroying our planet" its not a literal thing. Its more about it being habitable for a significant percentage of current life forms.

BUT, to take this literally... yes we do have the capacity to destroy our planet and completely kill it for life. We do have enough fire power on our planet to off set our rotation, which could potentially be so devastating we end up like Mars. When Wells wrote about the moon being destroyed, thats a real possibility even with our current technology, no moon, all life is fucked on earth. And of course we have the Hadron Collider. Which for the record is super super super super super super super unlikely it could happen, to the point where its not even something to think about, but it is possible, that it could destroy our own planet, our solar system and even a chunk of our galaxy.

The point is that this idea that we cannot affect the planet to the point where we kill off the majority of current species is not true. That we could not make the planet barren for life in general, is not true. And even that we could not psychically destroy our planet, is not true.

@kod: Funny just watching star trek TNG and its about a dyson sphere :P. Any way I googled and yes it was the dyson sphere.

• Bizarre readings from star called KIC 8462852 have baffled scientists
• One theory is dips in light caused by structure similar to Dyson sphere
• Others suggest break up of huge comets would block the starlight

Yah, typically i dislike suggestions of this nature simply becasue its more than likely untrue. But i actually find this super interesting because they continue to discover more and more and dismiss more and more possibility (like the comets are dismissed, theyve determined its not comets) with the possibility of a dyson sphere still there and not being able to be dismissed (when its actually one of the easier things to dismiss with the data we have). Highly unlikely but super interesting and incredible if its true.

i understand the non-literal destroying point and i agree.

i'm going to need some citations on the whole "enough firepower" to offset rotation though... what's the thinking there? keeping in mind that concocting some sort of circumstance where humans are intentionally trying to do that does not count. so don't come back with something like "well, if we take all the nuclear weapons in existence and bury them all at this point on the earth and detonate them" type thing makes no sense. even then i don't think it would do much of anything. besides, simply altering the earth's rotation / eliminating the moon (again, how is that going to happen? ) does not actually destroy the planet. maybe you could try to lower its orbit so it falls into the sun but good luck w/ that.

life is hearty as **** on earth and i do think eradicating it, again and ESPECIALLY when you are not intentionally trying to do so, is no trivial task. could you kill MOST of it? probably. it's that last .02% that's the tricky part...

There are multiple things we do NOW that affect the earths rotation. Look up dams and how they affect it. You can also look up NASAs studies on how climate change has also affected it. nuclear bombs are also a possibly, unlikely but its still there. Some of the ideas we have to "protect" ourselves from potentially earth changing asteroids are also suggested to end up being able to do this, if they go wrong (like if we blew up an asteroid without getting it out of our orbit it becomes buckshot basically, instead of a shell).

As for the moon. We already have plans to start mining the moon and imo that is a horrific idea given the structure of the moon being swiss cheese instead of something solid like a planet.

When people say "most" they are referencing beyond microbial and often sea life. But with the wrong actors in place and the the wrong nuclear war, yah we could very easily do as much damage as the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. 90% of species on the surface and like 60% of water species. Of course from that point its 50 50 on if things will improve for whats left, or get worse. There are multiple ways things like this could happen and the issue is not if its trivial or how unlikely, i was simply saying its entirely possible. Life may be healthy on earth but you're ignoring how fine tuned our climate and atmosphere are to maintain that current form of life. If most forms are to survive and evolve,these changes would need to happen slowly over long periods, not instantly. Its when you get into the instantly, the short periods of these things, is when you get into mass extinction.

And that last .02% of life you mention would be microbial, which can survive very harsh conditions and is actually the reason why we think Europa might have life. But i think if youre really focusing on this as being the counter, then youre missing the point.

my comments are referring to our current capabilities. building a massive damn that alters the rotation of the earth by nanosecond / day is not really consequential. shit, building a tree house technically alters the rotation of the earth.

mining the moon to the point its mass is significantly affected is not in the cards w/ our current technology

the comment regarding eliminating ALL life on earth was simply to point out that doing that, while still massively difficult ( the .02% ) is still orders of magnitude easier than the actual wholesale destruction of the planet. i agree that fast changes to the climate would make it extremely difficult for species to naturally respond.

in any case, we seem to be branching off into the weeds here. my original comments were on sally sourpuss's wholesale dismissal of humans.

No, building a tree house does not.... i get its hyperbole but its the wrong time to use it because we are talking about how small shifts can make for big changes that can often be negative to our spices or mammals and reptiles in general. No, large dams, already created on this earth, have already caused measurable changes.

In less than 5 years is when its scheduled to power on.

Yes, we are currently able to do this. And to put this in a better perspective, Rosetta, the space craft that landed on a comet traveling at speed mankind cannot even begin to reach, was the test for mining comets. the size and equipment on board was equivalent to mining equipment.

And yes, most of those in the qualified fields have big concerns about mining our moon because again, its not constructed like a planet. Its..... holey... loosely held together as far as celestial objects go.

I think youre really missing the point of concern for our planet and what the real issues are. I also think youre clouding what ive said with what you think is more likely to happen. I never said these things were likely to happen or even would, i was simply stating that we can, currently do these things.

measurable != consequential.

for perspective. china's three gorges damn ( largest on earth ) is estimated to have altered earth's moment of inertia enough to slow the rotation by 60ns / day. the 2011 earthquake near japan altered the earth's crust enough to speed up a day by a full 1.8us, 30x that of the damn and there are literally hundreds of earthquakes a year that have measurable effects on rotation. we should be vastly more concerned about what the effects on the ecosystem were in building the damn vs. the minute effect on the planets rotational speed.

the tree house comment was half hyperbole. just as raising a mass of water behind a damn alters the moment of inertia of the earth, so too would raising a small mass of material up into a tree. it may be in the range of fractions of yoctoseconds / day (immeasurable) but there would be an effect. physics is physics

as for moon mining. it really depends on what you consider "mining"

is sending a small craft there to get a sample and returning it to earth mining? or would the requirement be getting significant amounts of heavy equipment there capable of returning large amounts of material to earth, and making a profit?

i don't want to give the impression that i'm dismissing human's effect on the planet since i think that was the cause of the current tangent.

in short.

exoplanets cool, humans not as shitty as some make them out to be, earth harder to destroy than some may think

Has anyone ever thought, that maybe a planet with life might just reject humans? I'm not talking about intelligent life, but stuff like bacteria and viruses.

No. Not sample collecting, i would not call sample collecting mining. Mining, actual mining of precious metals by private companies for profit. Theyve been sending equipment up there for years now.

I think just this is dismissive of the points and concerns being made. When i said that we do have the technology to literally destroy the planet, or at least make it dead, i was not suggest it was likely or would happen or anything like that. Just saying, its entirely possible with our current technology. But that is not the real concern we face, the real concern we face is the survival of species as they exist.

No. A planet does not accept or reject human life. If its either capable of maintaining human life, or not. And when we go to another planet, if there is some form of even basic life on it, we will have to compete with it, but it is widely accepted that by the time we are doing this, our medicine will be much better at handling something like that.

Another thing you'd have to consider is there is actually a greater chance we would not be affected by established viruses. Bacteria probably, but not viruses... most likely not... like 9 out of 10 chance.... probably much higher than that... viruses evolve to affect its host. There have been millions of viruses on earth that dont affect human becasue they didnt evolve to.

private companies have been sending mining equipment up?? who? to where?

True, true. I hadn't considered any of those points.