PACK YOUR BAGS! Boffins spot Earth-size planet most likeliest yet to harbor alien life Scientists have spotted a planet slightly larger than Earth orbiting a distant star that looks to be the best contender yet for hosting life as we know it. In a paper in the journal Nature, published today, the team lead by Jason Dittmann of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics described LHS 1140, a rocky exoplanet …
While it is a pointless technicality given we can't get there in any foreseeable time or technology, it is worth a moment to consider that at 7 times the Earth's mass you could not escape its gravity well using chemical rocket engines.
But if you made it there in the 1st place you would be using some nuclear system or something we have not imagined (or maybe just considered possible) yet, so a technicality really.
For more on chemical engine limits: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition30/tryanny.html
You could escape it's gravity well using chemical rocket engines easily enough. It's just the scale of engineering problem, you'd need a multistage rocket probably about twenty times the size of the Apollo V rockets, which is still much larger than anything we are using today. And you'd need to deliver the entire thing to an interstellar rocket, transport it over 40 light years and then land it on a high gravity planet without damage.
Technically, we could do it with existing technology. Practically, people would get a bit upset at the price tag which could be called "prohibitive", but that's more politics about devoting a significant amount of GDP for a long time into something with no payback within anybodies lifetime with a huge risk of total failure.
Just like we could terraform Mars into an earthlike planet. It'd take about 70 thousand years at any remotely reasonable cost, but we could do it using technology existing today.
You could escape it's gravity well using chemical rocket engines easily enough.
Yep. For a planet with 1.4x Earth's radius and 7 times Earth's mass, you're looking at an escape velocity of 25km/s, give or take. 3.5x Earth's surface gravity will impose a modest increase in engine weight and a larger penalty in fuel for ~3-4km/s in gravity losses, versus Earth's 1km/s. That is feasible with chemical rockets, just challenging for any payload larger than one seat.
Locals are encouraged to review the work of Dyson and his Orion launch system.
@Zog_but_not_the_first
I'll pack their bags*, just to be on the safe side. I'll get their coats too.
* The usual suspects - politicians, media bores, psycho managers etc., etc.
These usual suspects do not need a habitable planet - just fire them off towards Sol and be done with them
a publicly used telephone
Telephone sanitisers mostly cleaned phones in offices. I think they're unfairly vilified. The real culprits were the people who employed them - a bunch of snake-oil merchants selling a solution to a non-existent health risk.
I dare say somebody used to clean public phone boxes, but you'd never have guessed.
Haven't been able to find any good articles speculating on what size stars constitute their own "Goldilocks" size.
Stars that are too big will not live long enough for life to evolve on any planets. Stars that are too small will bathe any planets in their habitable zone with too much radiation (via solar flares) for complex life to evolve.
Somewhere in the middle is a "Goldilocks" size star. Combine that with the standard "Goldilocks" zone for some kind of Goldilocks^2 effect to come up with how interesting candidates actually are.
Anyone offering short breaks, say till the 9th June? I'm bored already and my bullshit meter has moved into the red and I don't think it's going to move out.
Nice find though. I think it's important we keep looking because I do think we will crack the travel problem but will they be one way trips. I'm right in assuming that if we get close to the speed of light then 40 + 40 years would be a round trip?
" I'm right in assuming that if we get close to the speed of light then 40 + 40 years would be a round trip?"
Doesn't the theory of relativity have something to say about ageing when travelling at that speed? You would arrive back on earth at a point in time that was not 80 years after you left. IIRC time for a person on Earth would pass more quickly?
Yes, that's correct. The time for the traveler would seem normal to them, they would (hopefully) cause a nice warp in space.time between here and there, make a quick jump, do some science, jump back, and everyone they knew would be dead. Still, could be worse, we could miss out on the interesting science brought back by the time-warping travelers!
"1.4 times the size of Earth that has been clocked orbiting a red dwarf star in the constellation of Cetus."
So, Cetus is the whale, and Red Dwarf is the mining ship... I got this. Smoke me a kipper, no fatties on my new planet! :P
ATH+++
Even if we had a working "warp drive" (or whatever), I expect that the gravitational pull of the planet would make us all a mite uncomfortable. I mean, 200 lbs on Earth = around 1400 lbs there? If there were any intelligent inhabitants, we'd just have to wave to them from orbit.
"we'd just have to wave to them from orbit."
...while they laughed at how fragile we are...
Uhm... you do realize that if life existed at that amount of gravity, they would be much denser and squat.
If anything they would probably be more akin to an alligator than a human and more aquatic since the buoyancy would help.
Of course because of the heavy gravity... one could imagine the land based creatures would have a much shorter lifespan.
Seven times the mass, but 1.4 times larger. So a surface gravity 7/(1.4^2) = about 3.5 times ours. Still something where you'd want to put arch supports in your shoes.
But also a density 7/(1.4^3) = about 2.5 times ours, or a bit over 12.5 gm/cc. Iron comes in at 7.87, lead at 11.36. I haven't read the Fine Paper to see what error bars they give, but I'll take a guess that the planet is a little bigger and a little lighter than the given values, enough so to bring that density to a more reasonable value. Either that, or it has a core made of mercury (13.55) or gold (19.32) or uranium or something similarly exciting.
"...but I'll take a guess that the planet is a little bigger and a little lighter than the given values..."
Yeah, those numbers don't seem plausible: 1.4 x size & 7 x mass means something more dense than an iron core, even if the core is relatively larger than Earth's. The problem is that you can fusion elements, from hydrogen upwards and still gain energy, until you reach iron but at that point further fusion, to produce heavier elements, costs energy and this only occurs at the end of a very large star's life and in relatively small amounts.
my thoughts on the 'its mass suggest something denser than an iron core' question are. What if, unlike us with our 70% surface water, it has something like, 10% surface water, and that extra 60% surface is something like a much more dense version of 'rock' than we are used to. Or, it's Core is just much 'larger' proportionately than ours.
@D@v3: we're 70% _surface_ water, but by volume... if you assumed we average six km of water on the surface, and have about a 6000 km radius, that'd make us about 1/3 % water by volume.
@LeeE: as I described, those numbers indicate something denser than _lead_, not just for the core, but for the entire planet. It'd need a core of something really unusual, like mercury or gold or osmium or uranium -- and a whopping big core, too, and still need some heavy stuff around it.
The radius was determined by seeing how much the star's brightness dropped when the planet went in front of it (which wasn't much; the planet is a _lot_ smaller than the star, so it blocked barely enough light to be noticeable.) The mass was determined by measuring the radial velocity of the star relative to us: when the planet is moving away from us, the star is moving (very slightly, because it's a lot heavier) toward us, and when the planet moves toward us... you get the idea; measure the difference in speed between "moving toward" and "moving away", combine with an estimate of the star's mass and the distance between the star and planet, and you can get a mass for the planet.
These are all fussy measurements we couldn't even have done a couple of decades ago, and we're still at the point where the errors are a good percentage of the quantities being measured. The most likely scenario is just that the radius was underestimated by, say, 10% (which would drop the density by 30%) and/or the mass was overestimated by a bit.
Standard practice in a scientific paper would have been to say something along the lines of "the radius is 1.4 +/- 0.2 times that of the earth, with a mass 7.0 +/- 2.1 times that of the earth." The sigmas probably got dropped in the press release.
Closer to 800 lbs. It's 7 times the mass but 1.4 times the radius. Surface gravity would be about 35 m/s/s or close to 4 times that of earth. Still, even turning over in bed will be a bitch. I'll wait for the next "most likely to harbor life" . Another will be along shortly.
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... but should we add gravity to the goldilocks mix, at least for not-too-primitive life?
7 Earth masses @ about same radius, means 6-7 g, no? At that level, wouldn't that preclude most non-flat lifeforms? Outside of water, at least? I could see lichen/moss growing, but no trees or grass as we know it. And animals would have limited legs and especially arms to manipulate/lift things with. Since weight goes up by cube of size, while structural strength goes up by square (that's why a 50' humanoid giant is impossible), you'd have very squat, small animals. And not to forget circulatory problems.
Call me a dumb Earth-chauvinist, but I am having a hard time envisioning what would thrive at that gravity, outside of very primitive lifeforms.
"[...] but I am having a hard time envisioning what would thrive at that gravity, outside of very primitive lifeforms."
Considering that humans are a collection of mostly primitive organisms like mitochondria and bacteria - then possibly some sort of slime mould could achieve a collective consciousness?
then possibly some sort of slime mould could achieve a collective consciousness?
Certainly possible; I've found stuff in my fridge that could sit in parliament without anyone noticing were it not for its physical appearance.
Call me a dumb Earth-chauvinist, but I am having a hard time envisioning what would thrive at that gravity, outside of very primitive lifeforms.
Anything floating in water? They shouldn't have an issue. Except possibly with fire - bit of a bugger when the smoke's too heavy to get out of the way of the flame you're trying to keep going on a pond...
A balmy 3-4Gs...? What's that compared to the 40Gs Barlennan and the other Mesklinites thrive in...? Interestingly, also around a Red Dwarf btw...
There seems to be a correlation between large planets in close orbits, and fewer flares.
My estimates suggest that in fact the presence of interacting gravitational and magnetic fields causes the solar turbulence to be different and results in lots of small less harmful flares sort of like how the Moon prevents serious seismic activity.
Also a sufficiently powerful geomagnetic field might make all the difference, the field from a "Super-Earth" might *just* be enough to permit complex life.
Life will find a way. (Jeff Goldblum)
I did wonder about whether intelligence might have evolved there, 200MYa Earth was very different so the possibility of complex non-mammalian life is feasible.
They really might be small, grey and smart with chromatophores to give them natural cloaking abilities, large eyes adapted to the increased infrared and all sorts of other features.
Perhaps Betty and Barney Hill got it wrong, the "Grey" homeworld is in fact a planet much like this one.
We broke an embargo inadvertently. This happens from time to time. In such cases, we archive and republish for the correct time.
When we do this we archive the article and strip it out. This time we stripped out the article and then archived it - hence the public striptease.
@Axman said: "Why do exobiologist/astroboffins insist on the 'goldilocks zone' thing. We are, after all, talking about alien life.
<snip>
... exoticophiles - things like bugs that use solvents other than water, thingymajigs that operate at cryogenic temperatures utilising superfluidity and superconductivity, gassy bags of ephemeral catalysts floating in Jupiter like skies, organised magneto-creatures feeding off of a star's chromosphere... I could go on and on and on."
Simple. As your comment points out, the permutations are dizzying (and currently unknown to science). However, we DO KNOW it works with the "goldilocks" mix so lets start on a certainty to minimise the task. It happened here so is likely to have happened elsewhere.
I want to know when we can start building using robots real space ships. Will not be hard a tall.
Just use printing robots that read blue prints.
The only downside will be our ancient thrust mechanical engines and missing gravity plating.
We could build it today if we really wanted to. We already have 3D printers that can print metal to make metal cars parts for engines and body.
Now we just need metalic see though glass to be 3D printed.
it's bad enough keeping acclimatised to 1g, on this trip you'd have to start at 1g and generate up to 3g before you got there, cranking up the g's bit by bit until you're used to it.
Also a few people would have to live in a centrifuge on earth for a few years to see if there were any ill effects. What if you got there and couldn't do anything after discovering "gravity sickness" or summat like that?
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