Astronomy

[Dreamwoven]

Yes, that comment struck me too. They are vast ranges. How much else is that far out in terms of estimated distances? I mean 1,425 light years versus 7,000 light years.

[Dreamwoven]

http://www.universetoday.com/130357/...-for-bad-news/

It looks as if the latest proposals to investigate the moon of Saturn with liquid seas (the probe Europa Clipper) may not get funding. It looks to be an interesting project.

[YesNo]

Europa is more interesting as a source of life than other places. It would be nice to find living organisms there that are not related to those on Earth. I was hoping they might have found evidence of life on Mars, but I haven't heard of anything.

Still, being forced to keep to a tighter budget may be a good thing in the long run. That could lead to new technologies allowing more missions to be sent for the same cost.

[Dreamwoven]

Another idea is the possibility of a dyson sphere to collect the energy from a sun/star. See http://earthsky.org/space/tabbys-star-more-weirdness. So called out of a science fiction book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere. Interesting discussion, still unresolved...

[Dreamwoven]

spectacular conjunctions in the sky at the moment:
http://www.universetoday.com/130283/...-conjunctions/

[YesNo]

On Google Star Map, I see Mercury, Venus and Jupiter should be close together along with Saturn and Mars in a different portion of the sky. I'll have to pay attention tonight.

[Dreamwoven]

http://www.space.com/33780-could-pro...r-getaway.html.

Couple of links, too:

http://www.seeker.com/earth-like-pla....discovery.com

http://www.seeker.com/interstellar-t...765960258.html

http://www.seeker.com/icarus-interst...769714561.html

http://www.seeker.com/firefly-starsh...769538313.html

[YesNo]

I like the idea of those tiny probes that ride laser beams the best, but I don't see why we would want to send humans there. Robot technology needs to get better than it is. Come to think of it I don't understand why we aren't contemplating going to the Moon to practice new technologies rather than thinking about manned landing on asteroids. Even there I don't see why humans need to be the ones going to those places.

What we need to find is not just an Earth-like planet, but one that suggests there already is life on the planet. As the second article you linked to mentioned, we don't even know if those current Earth-like candidates are really Earth-like.

[Dreamwoven]

No, its true, the technology is not there yet, it is a long way away still. That's my feeling too.

[Dreamwoven]

http://www.universetoday.com/130419/...uri-exoplanet/

The above link deals with the chance that an earth-like planet is orbiting the nearest star to our own (Proxima Centauri). A statement will be made from the European Southern Observatoryhttp://www.eso.org/public/about-eso/esoglance/ around midday today.

[YesNo]

It looks like the ESO confirmed the planet's discovery: http://futurism.com/eso-confirms-ear...xima-centauri/

[Dreamwoven]

Great, well done YesNo. The link to the ESO post itself finally came out yesterday evening after I logged off:
http://www.universetoday.com/130427/...-nearest-star/

[Dreamwoven]

There are risks in long-distance space journeys made by tiny sail propulsion. This post in Universe Today discusses them:

http://www.universetoday.com/130458/...nherent-risks/

[Dreamwoven]

Something else I have been questioning is the description of a planet as "earth-like". It just means rocky and that it is within the habitable zone in terms of distance from its sun: http://www.universetoday.com/130469/...ma-centauri-b/.

We also have only "life on earth" as a yardstick.

Of course it is encouraging that Proxima Centauri b does fulfil the basic criteria, but then so does Mars...

[Iain Sparrow]

Something else I have been questioning is the description of a planet as "earth-like". It just means rocky and that it is within the habitable zone in terms of distance from its sun: http://www.universetoday.com/130469/...ma-centauri-b/.

We also have only "life on earth" as a yardstick.

Of course it is encouraging that Proxima Centauri b does fulfil the basic criteria, but then so does Mars...

The problem with Proxima Centauri, among other things, is that it periodically flares, and unless I'm mistaken is part of a distant binary star system... most people don't understand just how unlikely Life is, even on our extremely "earth-like" planet. Any solar system that falls short of our rather amazing circumstances, would be hard pressed to support higher lifeforms.
Also consider, when our sun was much younger and burned cooler, it was Venus that was in that habitable "goldilocks zone".