back to article NASA: 'Closest thing yet to ANOTHER EARTH' - FOUND

NASA boffins say they have found the closest thing yet to another Earth – Kepler-452b. Apparently the Valeria*-esque planet has heavy gravity, such that should humans ever colonise it they would become immensely strong. "This is the closest thing we've yet found to another Earth," said Jon Jenkins, Kepler data analysis chief …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Meh

    Jinxed

    "it would feel a lot like home."

    Except that it has "twice the gravity."

    Oh hey, the future come-on could go like: "Twice as nice as home!"

    Okay, any volunteers?

    Uh, anyone at all...?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Jinxed

      You could get used to twice the gravity - with a thicker atmosphere you'd get more oxygen in each breath (assuming a similar ~19% oxygen like Earth)

      Though they'd need to solve the problems with losing bone & muscle mass on a long space trip even if you could get there at 3000x light speed, because it is hard for astronauts when they first return to Earth as it is!

      1. Vector

        Re: Jinxed

        Yeah, we'd need more than "a new form of propulsion" to get to it. It'd have to be more like a wormhole or some Stargate-y portal thing.

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: Jinxed

          Tesseracts here we come.

        2. Jaybus

          Re: Jinxed

          No need for all of that. Warp speed is sufficient. At warp 4 it would be less than a month.

          1. Col_Panek

            Re: Jinxed

            I propose a contingent of politicians (list on request) to greet the new neighbors, to be launched into space with directions to finding the next wormhole to come along.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Jinxed

        Just need to accelerate continuously at 2g until you get half way there, then decelerate the same.

      3. Mark 85

        Re: Jinxed

        You could get used to twice the gravity - with a thicker atmosphere you'd get more oxygen in each breath (assuming a similar ~19% oxygen like Earth)

        And anyone coming back... even next generations will be bigger and stronger than anyone on Earth.... which will terrify most of the natives here.

        1. ravenviz Silver badge
          Coat

          Re: Jinxed

          @Mark 85, anyone such minded could use that strength to their advantage and turn the Earth into a battlefield, a Battlefield Earth if you will...

          /here

      4. Fibbles

        Re: Jinxed

        Is the human body even capable of living at a constant 2G? I realize pilots and the like are exposed to much higher G forces but that's usually only for brief periods. How would the human circulatory system, for example, manage with such increased gravity for years at a time?

        1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          Re: Jinxed

          Is the human body even capable of living at a constant 2G?

          I think it's likely. Other vertebrates have been raised successfully under continuous high acceleration (see e.g. Ed Regis' Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition). 2G really isn't that bad. Humans do well in a pretty wide range of other conditions - altitude and temperature extremes, for example - that require their bodies to adapt.

          The circulatory system probably wouldn't even notice once the subject was acclimatized. It's the joints that would take a beating. And of course falls would be more dangerous.

          Oh, and it'd be harder to swallow while upside-down. Peristalsis can only do so much.

    2. Charles Manning

      You'd need twice the gravity

      Just like you crave fresh air after a 12 hour plane flight, you'd want lots of gravity after 1400 years of weightless space travel.

      1. JeffyPoooh
        Pint

        Re: You'd need twice the gravity

        CM: "...after 1400 years of weightless space travel."

        There's that far-too-common 'cognitive bias' (faulty thinking) again.

        Something is 1400 Light Years away.

        So everyone immediately assumes that humans can travel at the Speed of Light.

        They're confused by the concept of a cosmic 'speed limit'. "Hey! Maybe if we travel there at night when the traffic police are off duty, we could push it a bit and get there in only 1000 years."

    3. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge
      FAIL

      Bad news for God

      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-schweitzer/earth-20-bad-news-for-god_b_7861528.html

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Bad news for God

        Never seen so many assumptions in one "science" article before...

        Only when you actually use real scientific methods to actually prove something, only then God will have to worry. Until then God is safe :)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Bad news for God

          @Safari: God can't worry, it doesn't exist except as a literary plot device in ancient works of fiction.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          @safari: Re: Bad news for God

          Just curious to know what part you don't agree with. That there are other planets outside the solar system? That the universe is about 13 billion years old? The age of the earth?

          It's getting pretty hard to make coherent arguments against these things nowadays, so I wonder what part of this you think is not scientific.

      2. Col_Panek

        Re: Bad news for God

        You mean, bad news for fundamentalists.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      Re: Jinxed

      Upvote for the Larry Niven reference.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re. Jinxed

    I call dibs on this being the actual homeworld of the Roswell Greys, rather than Zeta Reticuli on the grounds that the latter has no (as in zero) chance of being habitable.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Alien

      Re: Re. Jinxed

      > Zeta Reticuli

      Which was also selected on a bad match of a "starmap" drawn under hypnosis, based on noisy information about star positions .... you are bound to find a match like that.

      The alienselves never even said it was "starmap". Could have been a wormhole diagram into alternate dimensions for all we know. It was also 2+1D in the original form, whether real or imagined (actually, I hear the local planetary alignment at the time of the first flashback after the abduction matches with the big round things being Jupiter and Saturn, but I could never be bothered to check it)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Re. Jinxed

        Sounds plausible.

        In other news, LHC might have found a 2TeV resonance corresponding to M-SUSY.

        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
          Holmes

          Re: Re. Jinxed

          LHC might have found a 2TeV resonance corresponding to M-SUSY

          Exceedingly unliked to be true, my good fellow.

  3. Mutton Jeff

    Bank of glarhgx

    Wonder if they'd consider lending is some money.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Happy

      Re: Bank of glarhgx

      You only want to borrow money from people who live at a constant 2 gravities, if you're really, really, really sure you can pay it back.

      Otherwise you're liable to meet Ron from collections. He's only 5' tall, but he's 7' wide and weighs 20 stone of pure muscle. And he's only the accountant...

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: Bank of glarhgx

        Just trick him into a jumping contest in a room with a low ceiling.

  4. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Alien

    This is far outside Known Space!

    so we'll need a new form of propulsion to reach it

    We would also need a new form of life and a new form of radiation shielding. Only General AIs or maybe personality scans will ever be bothered to take that kind of trip.

    1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: This is far outside Known Space!

      Nah, all you need is a 'General Products' hull.

      P.S.

      Having Teela Brown on board might be helpful.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: This is far outside Known Space!

        All everyone ever needs is a General Products hull. Make mine a type 4, though.

        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

          Re: This is far outside Known Space!

          You will have to be a super-midget to fit into the small space left on the side of the hyperdrive shunt...

        2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Re: This is far outside Known Space!

          "All everyone ever needs is a General Products hull. Make mine a type 4, though."

          Just don't attempt to land on an anti-matter rock!

  5. Joe Cooper

    So in other words the headline "we found another Earth" is bullshit, just like the last two thousand times we've heard it.

    At least it's not a star-hugger with a six day orbit and an atmosphere made of vaporized lead and death this time.

    Exciting stuff for sure but people probably learned to ignore "new Earth found" headlines a decade ago.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Exciting it is, but I agree, the title is rubbish.

      Earth to Scientists : you will be able to declare that you have found a new Earth when you find and Earth-sized rocky planet in the Goldilocks zone.

      Five times the size and twice the gravity is NOT Earth-like. It would be very uncomfortable to try and establish a colony there (forgetting all about getting there in the first place), assuming the atmosphere is breathable.

      On the other hand, hats off to people who can look at a planet 1400 ly away and determine that it has volcanic activity. They must be wizards.

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Five times the size and twice the gravity is NOT Earth-like.

        Twice the gravity is a relatively minor issue, and five times the size is a bonus.

        It would be very uncomfortable to try and establish a colony there (forgetting all about getting there in the first place), assuming the atmosphere is breathable.

        Any planet we're likely to find is going to be "very uncomfortable". In the entire universe, sure, we'd find places so Earth-like we couldn't tell the difference. (Cosmologists will claim that there are ones where it'd be impossible to tell the difference.) But even in our Hubble volume, and certainly within the radius we can analyze using current technology on Earth or in orbit around it, it's extremely unlikely we'd find anything so accommodating to our tastes.

        True, there should be a huge number of candidates - rocky planets of about the same size in the G-zone with suitable composition and blah blah blah. But they'd smell funny and the light would be a bit off and the local flora and fauna wouldn't be good eats. Trace mineral concentrations would be off. The day would be too short or too long.

        I'm not saying we'll never find anything habitable (though I don't believe colonization of other planets is justified by anything other than species hubris, even if we can find a way to make it feasible with ludicrous amounts of shielding and generation- or seeding-ships). But if you could pop over there, you wouldn't like it much. It's the details that would get to you.

        Antarctica is likely to remain more congenial than any other planets we find in the neighborhood.

    2. Bob Vistakin
      Holmes

      Theres a much more earth like planet right next door

      It's about the same age.

      It's about the same size.

      It orbits the same star and about the same distance.

      It's called Venus. Let's go take a stroll round it shall we? According to the same readings we have of this Earth 2.0, it's much more likely to be hospitable.

  6. wolfetone Silver badge
    Trollface

    And if the residents of this new planet have any sense, they'll stay away from us Earthlings. If America or the UK hear it has oil, well, Mr.Chilcott will be even "busier" with that report.

  7. ITS Retired
    Boffin

    We don't even understand all of what we need to know

    as to how life was allowed to evolve here. For instance our magnetic field.

    We know we would have lost a good portion of our atmosphere without it and it helps to protect living things on the ground, but what other effects does it have on the air we have, to allow us to live in the first place? Without that magnetic field, what would out atmosphere look like? Another Venus?

    All this talk about finding another Earth is BS. The list needed to make another planet, an inhabitable earth, is long and we do not understand how long that list has to be.

    So stop already trying to tell us we found another earth. No, we haven't. We found another rocky planet, in the Goldilocks zone. Normally it's within 50% larger that the size of our own planet. A real another Earth would have to be with in a few percent of everything of our own planet. Sunlight, gravity, magnetic field, water, minerals/metals required for life, etc.

    And even if we did find one, there is no guarantee of any kind that there is any life more intelligent than say, goldfish there. No matter the age of that planet. "Intelligent life" may be a fluke of this planet alone. At least until Mother Earth finishes correcting her mistake.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Holmes

      Re: We don't even understand all of what we need to know

      > mistake

      Have you ever thought of aborting yourself?

    2. LaeMing

      Re: We don't even understand all of what we need to know

      Don't forget the large close moon producing nice tidal zones for the aquatic-terrestrial transition.

      1. Michael Thibault

        Re: We don't even understand all of what we need to know

        And the axial tilt, to add a degree of dynamism--a cyclic leveling of the playing fields.

    3. Velv
      Boffin

      Re: We don't even understand all of what we need to know

      You're right. Talk of another "Earth" is rubbish. We don't know how long the list is to make another "Earth"

      But we are finding evidence of planets that more and more match the criteria we know we require. They may be beyond our physical reach, but they are physically there.

      And that just reaffirms my understanding of science being right and religion being bunkus.

      1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

        Re: [...] science being right and religion being bunkus

        Religion is not "bunkus", it is a necessary tool in the construction of a society that is not based on you-got-what-I-want-give-it-or-I-kill-you.

        Religion is also a tool that can help people be better to themselves and to others. It is not the only tool, but it is a good tool when properly used, like all tools.

        Finally, religion is a very good intellectual exercise, and anything that makes people think is a good thing.

        Unfortunately, most people don't think. They just repeat endlessly the same words without bothering about the significance. Also, people just love to spout doctrine and feel superior. THAT is bunkus, not religion itself.

        Science does no better on that score. You can discuss endlessly with someone who thinks the Moon landings were faked, you will not convince him because he doesn't want to engage the brain and make the effort to understand.

        Religion and science stand hand in hand to enlighten us, it is we who are stupid cavemen, mouths agape in our ignorance.

        1. Sweep

          Re: [...] science being right and religion being bunkus

          Are you seriously trying to compare science to religion by using moon-landing deniers as examples of followers of science?

          And really claiming that without religion we would all be killing each other to get what we want? (weren't the conquistadors pretty religious? and the crusaders? and the vikings? the Romans?) would you actually murder your neighbour for some Ben and Jerry's if Jesus wasn't stopping you?

          As for your claim that religion makes people think, isn't faith an unquestioning belief, in the absence of evidence?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Meh

            Re: [...] science being right and religion being bunkus

            No, faith means having doubts. If you are certain you have no faith, there being no need for it.

            Which is why many religious people actually have no faith them being so certain and so their faith cannot save them.

            Scientists in general have faith becuse they can never be certain - so will you see many Scientsts in heaven and few religious?

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: [...] science being right and religion being bunkus

            @Sweep: I wonder what the Venn diagram of moon landing deniers and religious types is? Suspect a fairly heavy overlap, quite possibly the former almost exclusively contained within the latter given a propensity for believing nonsense in the face of overwhelming evidence on both parts.

          3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
            Happy

            Re: [...] science being right and religion being bunkus

            Upvoted, but this bit bears repeating 'cos it made me smile :-)

            would you actually murder your neighbour for some Ben and Jerry's if Jesus wasn't stopping you?

        2. DJO Silver badge

          Re: [...] science being right and religion being bunkus

          "Religion is not "bunkus", it is a necessary tool in the construction of a society that is not based on you-got-what-I-want-give-it-or-I-kill-you."

          Religion is bunk, but that's not to say it doesn't have a useful function in developing a society when there are many unanswered questions.

          Religion is no longer necessary as we now have answers to most of the questions religion used to provide (incorrect) answers to.

          That's not to say all the answers we have now are all correct but they are more correct than those supplied by religion and they allow for development while those in religion are static and dogmatic.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: [...] science being right and religion being bunkus

          @Pascal Monett: you've got your tenses mixed up, please rewrite in the past tense when referring to the utility of religion, we're done with that shit, time to move on.

          I'm sure that if I'm wrong on this whatever flavour of magic sky fairy you adhere to will get in touch to advise us all.

        4. Kubla Cant

          Re: [...] science being right and religion being bunkus

          Religion is not "bunkus", it is a necessary tool in the construction of a society that is not based on you-got-what-I-want-give-it-or-I-kill-you.

          You're reversing cause and effect. Religion, being a human construct, is an expression of innate, or at least culturally ingrained, human motivations.

          Furthermore, if religion abolishes you-got-what-I-want-give-it-or-I-kill-you (which is unproven), it does so in order to substitute you-believe-something-different-convert-or-I-kill-you.

          1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

            Furthermore, if religion abolishes you-got-what-I-want-give-it-or-I-kill-you (which is unproven), it does so in order to substitute you-believe-something-different-convert-or-I-kill-you.

            <cough> ISIL, the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, burning or drowning 'witches' <cough>

            Religion does not do that.

            Men do that.

            But it's okay, we'll get it right in a few millennia.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              @Pascal Monett: re: 'men do that'

              Yes but religion is a social construct of (primitive) humans and therefore reflects the specific culture in which it exists. If it were an absolute, objective truth then there would be little wriggle room for using it to justify whatever people want but it's not. Ideologies are there to be challenged and discarded when they no longer serve a purpose (eg Stalinism has largely had it's day, although there are still some recidivists out there)

              We will get it right(ish) at some point in the future but that will not involve the worship of magic sky fairies, nor reverence to some scientifically illiterate ramblings from back in the mists of time. No need to bring ancient prejudices with us on our collective journey into the bright future.

        5. TonyJ

          Re: [...] science being right and religion being bunkus

          "..Religion is not "bunkus", it is a necessary tool in the construction of a society that is not based on you-got-what-I-want-give-it-or-I-kill-you..."

          <cough> ISIL, the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, burning or drowning 'witches' <cough>

          Yeah. That religion sure is useful for all the world peace we now have.

    4. Michael Thibault

      Re: We don't even understand all of what we need to know

      > Without that magnetic field, what would out atmosphere look like?

      At a guess, it would look like the last of the plume of smoke coming off a wooden match extinguished by a puff of air---with the plume of what was once the atmosphere, and likely all of the surface water, heading off into deep space, directly opposite the sunward side of the planet.

    5. Jaybus

      Re: We don't even understand all of what we need to know

      A real another Earth would have to be with in a few percent of everything of our own planet. Sunlight, gravity, magnetic field, water, minerals/metals required for life, etc.

      And you know this how? As we have yet to find life on any other planets, we don't have much data to support your assumption either.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Intelligence

    Being a million years ahead of us they legalised dope a long time ago. Now they have heads twice as heavy as ours :)

  9. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    1400 light years

    Just to be clear, with today's propulsion (say 60,000 km/hour), that's 25 MILLION years away.

    "Bored, bored, bored, tedious, ..."

    1. Charles Manning

      Re: 1400 light years

      We don't need new propulsion. We need new physics.

      Even travelling at light speed it would be 2800 years before you get any info back: 1400 for the trip out and 1400 for the signals home.

      Good luck getting funding for a project like that!

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Re: 1400 light years

        If you could do it at a continuous 1 to 2G acceleration, then it'd subjectively be a relatively short trip.

        Good luck finding a propulsion technology that can do that though...

        1. Chemist

          Re: 1400 light years

          "If you could do it at a continuous 1 to 2G acceleration, then it'd subjectively be a relatively short trip."

          If, as you say, you could develop the propulsion the occupants might well experience a short trip but for the ones here waiting for the information it would still be 2800 years.

        2. Jaybus

          Re: 1400 light years

          Good point. At 1G, you would reach 90% C in about 15 months, relative to Earth. After about 2 and a half years on Earth, velocity relative to Earth would be maximized. After that, you would still feel the 1G force, but would not obtain any more velocity relative to Earth. The really tricky part is time. Even achieving 99% C velocity relative to Earth, it would still be 1400 years on Earth before you reached the planet. But how long would it seem to those aboard ship? Ship's time slows to a crawl, relative to Earth, as the ship approaches an Earth-relative velocity of C. I think you are correct to say it could be a "relatively" short trip.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: 1400 light years

            "Yeah, a few stasis booths and they are laughing.

            Well not really, they'd be unconscious but still.."

            Rodney McKay, SG:Atlantis

      2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Alien

        Re: 1400 light years

        > 2800 years

        A mere instant in time for even the most basic sophonts.

        One night, Leila stood alone in the garden, watching the sky. From their home world, Najib, they had travelled only to the nearest stars with inhabited worlds, each time losing just a few decades to the journey. They had chosen those limits so as not to alienate themselves from friends and family, and it had never felt like much of a constraint. True, the civilisation of the Amalgam wrapped the galaxy, and a committed traveller could spend two hundred thousand years circling back home, but what was to be gained by such an overblown odyssey? The dozen worlds of their neighbourhood held enough variety for any traveller, and whether more distant realms were filled with fresh novelties or endless repetition hardly seemed to matter. To have a goal, a destination, would be one thing, but to drown in the sheer plenitude of worlds for its own sake seemed utterly pointless.

        A destination? Leila overlaid the sky with information, most of it by necessity millennia out of date. There were worlds with spectacular views of nebulas and star clusters, views that could be guaranteed still to be in existence if they travelled to see them, but would taking in such sights firsthand be so much better than immersion in the flawless images already available in Najib’s library? To blink away ten thousand years just to wake beneath a cloud of green and violet gas, however lovely, seemed like a terrible anticlimax.

        1. JeffyPoooh
          Pint

          Re: 1400 light years

          DAM quoting ACC IIRC...

          Imagine that they made a last minute purchase at the gift shop before setting out on a multi-decade journey.

          Not thinking, they used a high interest rate Wonga credit card.

          OH NOOOOOOOOOOOES......

          Get back to find out that they owe octtillions of dollars.

          1. Uncle Slacky Silver badge
            Thumb Up

            Re: 1400 light years

            ...or, à la Red Dwarf, that they effectively own everything, having left the light on at home and made NORWEB the greatest financial and military force on Earth on the basis of the debt you owe them.

    2. Mark 85

      Re: 1400 light years

      Time and space are no match for us mere mortals. Those two will kick our ass every time....

    3. Salts

      Re: 1400 light years

      Are we there yet!

    4. stuartnz

      Re: 1400 light years

      And that's optimistic - New Horizons, the fastest ever launched, is at 50K kph and slowing.

    5. Not also known as SC
      Joke

      Re: 1400 light years

      Are we there yet?

      Are we there yet?

      Are we there yet?

      ...

      Edit: Drat someone beat me to it :-(

      1. Sweep

        Re: 1400 light years

        Someone got there first? :)

    6. Roj Blake Silver badge

      Re: 1400 light years

      Just to be clear, with today's propulsion (say 60,000 km/hour), that's 25 MILLION years away.

      "Bored, bored, bored, tedious, ..."

      ------------------------

      Sounds a bit like driving down the A303 to a holiday in the the West Country

  10. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    Highly elliptical orbit

    They're kinda assuming that the orbit is near circular. It probably is, but the data might look about the same even if this planet dipped into the star's coronasphere with each orbit.

    Better check the reviews before setting out.

    1. Annihilator

      Re: Highly elliptical orbit

      Near circular orbits exist because they're more stable, particularly in what is likely to be a multi-planet system.

  11. Efros

    Thuktun Flishithy incoming!

    Awaiting the arrival of the Chtaptisk Fithp...

    Better get those project Orion plans dusted off!

    1. Shrimpling

      Re: Thuktun Flishithy incoming!

      They would need to travel for more than just Centauries to reach us even with a Bussard Ramjet... I think we will be ok.

  12. W Donelson

    Awesome! TOTALLY Awesome!

    ... Now how do we get to it to screw it up?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Alien

      Re: Awesome! TOTALLY Awesome!

      Now how do we get to it to screw it up?

      Meanwhile on Kepler 452b the scientists at KASA announce that they've found Kepler 2.0 aka Planet Earth. They take one look at the current state of the place and then point their telescope in the opposite direction hoping to find somewhere less fucked up.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Awesome! TOTALLY Awesome!

      "Inhabitants of Kelper, we bring you... RELIGION" :D

  13. forcing_you_to_think

    Won't work...no women will go.....

    Twice the gravity? Are you kidding me? No women will ever go to a planet that instantly doubles their weight.

    1. Mephistro
      Trollface

      Re: Won't work...no women will go.....

      Why go there to double their weight, when they can do it here, in the comfort of their own homes?

    2. Charles Manning

      Re: Won't work...no women will go.....

      Not that NASA would allow them to pack a 1400 year supply of anti-wrinkle cream.

      With carry on baggage for a 1400 year flight there won't be much room to buy stuff at duty-free either.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Won't work...no women will go.....

      And they say that sexism puts ladies off careers in IT, now where would I find evidence of such a ridiculously outdated point of view?

      Try substituting 'women' for a combination of a racial group and an equally lazy generalisation and see how your posts read.

      I mean seriously guys, there are females who've done lengthy missions on the ISS. I'd advise you all not to sign up for any lengthy space missions, you're unlikely to be able to take your Bernard Manning video collections with you (I'm assuming that you still live in the '70s and have yet to make the move to dvd)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Won't work...no women will go.....

        Does your husband have Bernard Manning videos?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Won't work...no women will go.....

          Does yours?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Won't work...no women will go.....

        It's a joke, it was moderately funny and not at all offensive. If you're offended for some hypothetical other person then you're an idiot. If you're offended because you're a woman and he was talking about you, then you're also an idiot.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Won't work...no women will go.....

          Not offended just saddened.

          I very much enjoy the witty banter on el Reg forums and there is a wealth of it that doesn't rely on outmoded stereotypes of any flavour. I certainly don't object to strong piss taking and have been known to indulge in some very offensive jokes when I'm amongst friends but I wouldn't post them on public forums because that would be inappropriate. El Reg is a site for IT professionals (as well as 'idiots' like me).

          So, if I'm not offended then I'm not an idiot? If you can't respect my opinion and must resort to insults then I'd suggest that you are.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Won't work...no women will go.....

        And they say that sexism puts ladies off careers in IT, now where would I find evidence of such a ridiculously outdated point of view?

        Thank you for voicing the neurotic "Politically Correct" fundamentalist viewpoint. Your right to not be offended has been noted.

  14. PhilipN Silver badge

    Intelligent life

    The search goes on, somewhat closer to home, with decidedly mixed results.

    For every New Horizons team there are a million Next Door Neighbours who have difficulty using cutlery.

  15. Winkypop Silver badge
    Devil

    Sign me up

    Do they have a mini-break deal?

  16. Malc

    Back of Envelope Calculations

    Surely with a radius 1.6 of Earth's, its volume is nearer 8 times that of Earth. And guessing a similar average density gives a Surface Gravity of around 3.3G.

    Hmm, reaches for calculator and old dusty Astrophysics book...

    Methinks to call it Earth 2.0 they've taken the lower limits of their measurements to produce the most Earthlike qualities. Unfortunately, they've ditched the overlarge, molten Iron core of Earth to reduce the average density. (Our little planet is the avg. densest body on our solar system bar the occasional asteroid made of pure platinum)

    1. Annihilator

      Re: Back of Envelope Calculations

      Not sure where you got 1.6 from? The mass is 5x that of earth, the radius is 1.6. Surface gravity is G*m/r^2. Gives you ~19m/s^2, or roughly twice our planet's 9.8.

      1. Malc

        Re: Back of Envelope Calculations

        I got 1.6 from an alternative source, erm the BBC.

        Mines the one with the big hood and dark sunglasses in the pocket (let's not tell anyone about this)

        edit: Checked NASA's page "Kepler-452b is 60 percent larger in diameter than Earth "

      2. annodomini2
        FAIL

        Re: Back of Envelope Calculations

        They don't know the mass of the planet, 5x the Earth is an estimate as is the subsequent Surface gravity.

  17. paulc
    WTF?

    they just had to...

    get in Global Warming...

  18. I've forgotten what I wanted to say...

    If I may quote Mr Banks, re "The Sleeper Service"...

    "Two hundred and thirty-three thousand times the speed of light. Dear holy fucking shit. The Yawning Angel thought there was something almost vulgar about such a velocity. where the hell was it heading for? Andromeda?"

    That would do nicely. Thanks.

  19. peterkin

    Welcome to Majipoor.

    1. hplasm
      Thumb Up

      Welcome to Majipoor.

      "My god- It's full of jugglers!"

  20. hi_robb

    May I be the first...

    To welcome our new Kepler 452b dwelling overlords.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Travelling

    It took how long to get a probe to Puto? No chance any of us alive now are getting to this place.

  22. Spoobistle

    life has already died out on Kepler 452b...

    On a sweaty greenhouse of a planet, about a billion years ago, Noel Smuk is arguing with his executives.

    "Well if we can't get a person off this boiling hellhole, what can we do?"

    "How about sending a robot ship with frozen microbes? The AI can scan for life and seed any sterile environments, then come back and tell us where it has fertilised. By the time it gets back we'll have developed better cryopreservation."

    "Great, where to go?"

    "There's this little exoplanet about 1400 LY away, bit small, bit young but it should definitely be on the list"...

  23. SteveG
    Alert

    Diet world!

    Twice the gravity! twice the workout! Would be a stone cold killer lugging the paragliding kit up the hill though.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Diet world!

      Their local version of Chuck Norris will be TWO TIMES CHUCKER!

  24. Kepler 452b

    Greetings Earthlings

    Did someone call?

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