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  • #16
    rocwell wrote: View Post
    NASA's Kepler mission finds the "closest twin to Earth".



    Aliens???
    Ya this is super cool, but unfortunately, considering this planet is 1,400 Light Years away, we'll never really know, I can't imagine.

    To put that in perspective, Pluto is 7.5 Billion KMs away.
    1 Light year is about 9.5 Trillion KMs.
    1,400 Light Years is ... well do the math. Haha

    So not only that, but anything we're actually looking at, with regards to this planet, is 1,400 year old data ... LOL

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    • #17
      When the Overlords come, I'm selling out humanity so hard

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      • #18
        Joey wrote: View Post
        Ya this is super cool, but unfortunately, considering this planet is 1,400 Light Years away, we'll never really know, I can't imagine.

        To put that in perspective, Pluto is 7.5 Billion KMs away.
        1 Light year is about 9.5 Trillion KMs.
        1,400 Light Years is ... well do the math. Haha

        So not only that, but anything we're actually looking at, with regards to this planet, is 1,400 year old data ... LOL
        road trip anyone?

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        • #19
          Joey wrote: View Post
          Ya this is super cool, but unfortunately, considering this planet is 1,400 Light Years away, we'll never really know, I can't imagine.

          To put that in perspective, Pluto is 7.5 Billion KMs away.
          1 Light year is about 9.5 Trillion KMs.
          1,400 Light Years is ... well do the math. Haha

          So not only that, but anything we're actually looking at, with regards to this planet, is 1,400 year old data ... LOL
          Google is pretty cool - I typed in "1400 Light Years divided by 7.5 billion kms" and it worked ... "1 765 965.3"

          Planet Keplar-452b is 1.8ish million times further away than Pluto is.

          Edit: Renamed the thread so I didn't feel the need to relate everything back to Pluto .. LOL

          Edit 2: This is also a good time to point out that when you ask Google "What is the Answer to Life" it will tell you 42. As much as I hate Google, they're pretty swell.
          Last edited by Joey; Thu Jul 23, 2015, 06:58 PM.

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          • #20
            I finally got around to looking at the Pluto images over at NASA.gov. Wow, some of those images are absolutely breath taking:

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            • #21
              Did anyone hear of this potential alien mega-structure detected? Interesting possibilities (even after ignoring the sensationalist headlines).

              http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astro..._baffling.html

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              • #22
                Nilanka wrote: View Post
                Did anyone hear of this potential alien mega-structure detected? Interesting possibilities (even after ignoring the sensationalist headlines).

                http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astro..._baffling.html
                I did read about this, but didn't see they were positing it could be a Dyson Sphere type mechanism around the star ... that's pretty sweet.

                Dyson spheres always blew my mind ...

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                • #23
                  http://gizmodo.com/most-earth-like-w...yet-1737908129

                  Essentially it takes a long time for stars to live/die enough to create the heaviest metals etc that allowed earth to be so special so they theorize that 8% of earth like planets have formed with about 92% of them still to come. Crazy thought. Turns out we need to point the telescopes the other way. This seeing into the past thing isn't giving us the answers.

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                  • #24
                    Nilanka wrote: View Post
                    Did anyone hear of this potential alien mega-structure detected? Interesting possibilities (even after ignoring the sensationalist headlines).

                    http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astro..._baffling.html

                    I love Google image search.

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                    • #25
                      Asteroid to narrowly miss earth on Halloween

                      (CNN)Don't look now, but an asteroid is heading our way on Halloween.

                      On the other hand, go ahead and look. As it misses Earth by about 300,000 miles (slightly farther away than the moon), the asteroid, named 2015 TB145, will be visible to those with good telescopes -- and NASA, which announced the discovery.

                      Calling it "one of the best radar targets of the year," a Jet Propulsion Laboratory report on the asteroid said that "the flyby presents a truly outstanding scientific opportunity to study the physical properties of this object."

                      The asteroid will be traveling through Orion on October 30-31.

                      It's a good thing it will miss, though. The asteroid is estimated to be 300 to 600 meters wide and traveling at 78,000 mph. By comparison, the meteorite that exploded in the sky over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 was about 20 meters wide.
                      http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/21/us/ast...alloween-feat/

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                      • #26


                        How insignificant we really are.

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                        • #27
                          Joey wrote: View Post
                          I did read about this, but didn't see they were positing it could be a Dyson Sphere type mechanism around the star ... that's pretty sweet.

                          Dyson spheres always blew my mind ...
                          Apparently, there's a more realistic explanation than Dyson Spheres:

                          ...some stars don't have a uniform brightness level because they're irregularly shaped and "oblate" discs. As the researchers write in that study:

                          When a star is oblate, it has a larger radius at its equator than it does at its poles. As a result, the poles have a higher surface gravity, and thus higher temperature and brightness. Thus, the poles are "gravity brightened", and the equator "gravity darkened."

                          The star becomes oblate (and hence gravity darkening occurs) because the centrifugal force resulting from rotation creates additional outward pressure on the star.

                          This creates patches of darker and lighter regions within these kinds of stars, so the light curves that make it back to Earth won't look completely uniform. What's more, planets often orbit "obliquely" from Earth's perspective and do not pass directly in front of a star.
                          http://www.techinsider.io/alien-mega...aign=buffer-ti

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                          • #28
                            http://qz.com/538351/nasa-just-relea...utm_source=YPL

                            some pics of encladus. doesn't look like a lot of meteors smashed into its surface to me

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                            • #29
                              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tstyqz2g7o

                              most recent video on the pbs spacetime channel. i like this channel. physics from an australian seems funny to me

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                              • #30
                                Dyson Speres. Cool!

                                But ...as the energy needs of our species don't yet warrant a Dyson sphere being thrown around a nearby sun ... (and a hell of an engineering project anyway) ...

                                Shouldn't we, at least, consider throwing one or two around the DeRozan and Casey threads, here at RR?

                                (GO GREEN, Baby!
                                Last edited by Wild-ling#1; Mon Nov 2, 2015, 03:15 AM.

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