pack your bags earthlings... new planet found

g under p

Is this new planet near my favorite galaxy where I like to have some fun.



The Sombero Galaxy

MrMerkinball

With our fastest known spaceship, a trip there would take 87,000 years. In order for humans to get there, they would have to procreate about 3000 generations.

With all that pro-creatin', that would be one funky ride!

ONCE DEVIDED

they got good weed in dagobah :think: :thumbup:[/quote]
its great stuff
only drawback is it stunts your growth, turns u green and you get your sentances mixed up

Hugh Freaking Dillon

can someone please explain to me the point of this science? I mean, really, why are we looking for habitable planets that we can't even get to? "hey, Bob, I found a new planet!" "really? awesome! how far is it?" "only 8 million light years away!" "so, we can never get there or contact the habitants if someone is even there?" "nope!" "cool anyway!" "Yeah, and it only cost the taxpayer $500 million dollars for us to get our jollies!"

Seriously, this is junk. As someone said above, if it would take us 3000 generations to get there, and the main purpose is a quick fix because it's "too difficult" for us to fix this planet, that makes as much sense to me as going on a trip to Africa with a stopover on Mars.

catefrances

Paul David wrote:

can someone please explain to me the point of this science? I mean, really, why are we looking for habitable planets that we can't even get to? "hey, Bob, I found a new planet!" "really? awesome! how far is it?" "only 8 million light years away!" "so, we can never get there or contact the habitants if someone is even there?" "nope!" "cool anyway!" "Yeah, and it only cost the taxpayer $500 million dollars for us to get our jollies!"

Seriously, this is junk. As someone said above, if it would take us 3000 generations to get there, and the main purpose is a quick fix because it's "too difficult" for us to fix this planet, that makes as much sense to me as going on a trip to Africa with a stopover on Mars.

imagine if they put all that money they use for space exploration into health care or education... or both, cause they use so much of it.

Hugh Freaking Dillon

that's what's always bothered me the most. mankind's egotism/stupidity won't let him focus on the real needs of his own species. "Fuck poverty! Let's go chase ET!"

catefrances wrote:

Paul David wrote:

can someone please explain to me the point of this science? I mean, really, why are we looking for habitable planets that we can't even get to? "hey, Bob, I found a new planet!" "really? awesome! how far is it?" "only 8 million light years away!" "so, we can never get there or contact the habitants if someone is even there?" "nope!" "cool anyway!" "Yeah, and it only cost the taxpayer $500 million dollars for us to get our jollies!"

Seriously, this is junk. As someone said above, if it would take us 3000 generations to get there, and the main purpose is a quick fix because it's "too difficult" for us to fix this planet, that makes as much sense to me as going on a trip to Africa with a stopover on Mars.

imagine if they put all that money they use for space exploration into health care or education... or both, cause they use so much of it.

Jason P

If anyone is half-way interested in space, an easy target right now is Jupiter in the SE sky around 9 pm (by 11pm is almost due south). Jupiter is easy to spot as it is one of the brightest objects in the SE sky. With a set of binoculars (10x or better) you will be able to see up to four of Jupiter's moons circling her (last night I could spot three of them).

Godfather.

catefrances wrote:

that new planet doesnt spin. i need day AND night in rotation. not one or the other. forget it... im not going.

Godfather.

Jason P

catefrances wrote:

Paul David wrote:

can someone please explain to me the point of this science? I mean, really, why are we looking for habitable planets that we can't even get to? "hey, Bob, I found a new planet!" "really? awesome! how far is it?" "only 8 million light years away!" "so, we can never get there or contact the habitants if someone is even there?" "nope!" "cool anyway!" "Yeah, and it only cost the taxpayer $500 million dollars for us to get our jollies!"

Seriously, this is junk. As someone said above, if it would take us 3000 generations to get there, and the main purpose is a quick fix because it's "too difficult" for us to fix this planet, that makes as much sense to me as going on a trip to Africa with a stopover on Mars.

imagine if they put all that money they use for space exploration into health care or education... or both, cause they use so much of it.

Science is education. And $500M may seem like a lot, but it is a mere drop in the overall fiscal budget. This project is a extremely cheap method for mankind to probe the unknown of the universe, much cheaper then flying to the moon and as expensive as four (4) F-22 Raptors.

You may rally against the money spent on the stimulus, defense, welfare, healthcare, etc, but please leave NASA and their meager budget alone. Thank you. :wave:

catefrances

Jason P wrote:

catefrances wrote:

Paul David wrote:

can someone please explain to me the point of this science? I mean, really, why are we looking for habitable planets that we can't even get to? "hey, Bob, I found a new planet!" "really? awesome! how far is it?" "only 8 million light years away!" "so, we can never get there or contact the habitants if someone is even there?" "nope!" "cool anyway!" "Yeah, and it only cost the taxpayer $500 million dollars for us to get our jollies!"

Seriously, this is junk. As someone said above, if it would take us 3000 generations to get there, and the main purpose is a quick fix because it's "too difficult" for us to fix this planet, that makes as much sense to me as going on a trip to Africa with a stopover on Mars.

imagine if they put all that money they use for space exploration into health care or education... or both, cause they use so much of it.

Science is education. And $500M may seem like a lot, but it is a mere drop in the overall fiscal budget. This project is a extremely cheap method for mankind to probe the unknown of the universe, much cheaper then flying to the moon and as expensive as four (4) F-22 Raptors.

You may rally against the money spent on the stimulus, defense, welfare, healthcare, etc, but please leave NASA and their meager budget alone. Thank you. :wave:

well i agree science is education. im just questioning the probing of the unknown and never will be. in this instance whats the point of knowing theres a planet out there thats habitable(and i use that term loosely) if we cant ever inhabit it or get there. sounds like a tease to me. or is this a case of us just knowing cool shit?
anyhoo...

Hugh Freaking Dillon

$500 million was an arbitrary number I pulled out of my ass. I'm sure it's light years more than that. Regardless, I still think it's wasted money, no matter where it comes from, government, the private sector, whatever. What good is education if it's not practical? IE: we're never going to get there, so who effin' cares??

Jason P wrote:

catefrances wrote:

Paul David wrote:

can someone please explain to me the point of this science? I mean, really, why are we looking for habitable planets that we can't even get to? "hey, Bob, I found a new planet!" "really? awesome! how far is it?" "only 8 million light years away!" "so, we can never get there or contact the habitants if someone is even there?" "nope!" "cool anyway!" "Yeah, and it only cost the taxpayer $500 million dollars for us to get our jollies!"

Seriously, this is junk. As someone said above, if it would take us 3000 generations to get there, and the main purpose is a quick fix because it's "too difficult" for us to fix this planet, that makes as much sense to me as going on a trip to Africa with a stopover on Mars.

imagine if they put all that money they use for space exploration into health care or education... or both, cause they use so much of it.

Science is education. And $500M may seem like a lot, but it is a mere drop in the overall fiscal budget. This project is a extremely cheap method for mankind to probe the unknown of the universe, much cheaper then flying to the moon and as expensive as four (4) F-22 Raptors.

You may rally against the money spent on the stimulus, defense, welfare, healthcare, etc, but please leave NASA and their meager budget alone. Thank you. :wave:

catefrances

Paul David wrote:

$500 million was an arbitrary number I pulled out of my ass. I'm sure it's light years more than that. Regardless, I still think it's wasted money, no matter where it comes from, government, the private sector, whatever. What good is education if it's not practical? IE: we're never going to get there, so who effin' cares??

knowing stuff is cool.

norm

Paul David wrote:

$500 million was an arbitrary number I pulled out of my ass. I'm sure it's light years more than that. Regardless, I still think it's wasted money, no matter where it comes from, government, the private sector, whatever. What good is education if it's not practical? IE: we're never going to get there, so who effin' cares??

sometimes the learning is in the journey not at the destination...and by saying this, i am not advocating spending billions of dollars on space exploration at this time...we need to get things right here before we can go back into space

Jason P

Paul David wrote:

$500 million was an arbitrary number I pulled out of my ass. I'm sure it's light years more than that. Regardless, I still think it's wasted money, no matter where it comes from, government, the private sector, whatever. What good is education if it's not practical? IE: we're never going to get there, so who effin' cares??

The budget for the entire Kepler telescope project is $600M (w/ a budget cap) and that total cost includes a six year operating budget for the lifespan of the project, so you were actually pretty close in your estimate. Annually, it is costing they taxpayers $100M which is a drop in the fiscal budget. The project is part of NASA's Discovery Program which funds low-cost (relative) missions to explore the solar system and the universe. Other missions launched under the Discovery Program include the Mars Pathfinder, the Deep Impact comet landing, and the Messenger probe of Mercury.

As for the debate of education vs. practicality, this project allows us the ability to actually find other planets in the universe. Little is known and this is the next step in creating a map of the cosmos. Will we ever go to one of the planet that we find? Probably not. Does it have a educational purpose and allow for our collective knowledge to expand? Yes.

In comparison, poetry does not yield practical results (i.e. we can't go and witness the actually Odyssey) but I would not suggest that we cut all funding to poetry because it doesn't result in a tangible result. Poetry allows for one's mind and imagination to run free. I get the same results from looking at the night skies through my telescope.

Out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on the Hubble telescope?

dunkman

Cosmo wrote:

Great... another planet we can fuck up. Awesome.

i personally don't think this planet is even close to being fucked up by us... we've at best caused it some slight scabbing... but Earth is a genuinely awesome and beautiful place.

Hugh Freaking Dillon

I don't know that you can actually equate the usefullness of poetry vs astronomy. Of course not everything we do or enjoy has a practical purpose, but poetry also doesn't cost that much money. I don't see any government agencies funding operations to eventually go back in time to where famous poems were first written. That's my point: what is the inherent purpose of going out into space? Mankind's ridiculous ego. Seinfeld put it best: there is no more male idea in the history of the world than "let's fly up to the moon and drive around".

Do I enjoy staring up at the stars and learning about planets in our solar system? Yeah, it's cool stuff. But to spend that kind of money on the idea of another habitable planet LIGHT YEARS away from us? Why is this exciting to people? Do we really think there are going to be other life forms that are in this same ultra-miniscule spec of time that we currently exist in? You know what the odds are of that? And not only extra-Terrestrial beings, but we can't go to these planets. We probably never will.

As for my thoughts on Hubble? Hubble's a funny word. Beyond that, you could argue that it was a huge waste of money. Sure, it has yielded lots of results, but in relation to the equal results by land telescopic means, it has been hundreds of times more expensive.

I have nothing against astronomy as a whole. It's this one topic. I can see the benefit behind telescopes and such. they can help us knowing our surroundings out there a bit better, and maybe one day save us all by finding an object that's about to smash us all to space dust in time to stop it. but to me there's just no point in funding research of planets 3000 travel generations away.

Jason P wrote:

Paul David wrote:

$500 million was an arbitrary number I pulled out of my ass. I'm sure it's light years more than that. Regardless, I still think it's wasted money, no matter where it comes from, government, the private sector, whatever. What good is education if it's not practical? IE: we're never going to get there, so who effin' cares??

The budget for the entire Kepler telescope project is $600M (w/ a budget cap) and that total cost includes a six year operating budget for the lifespan of the project, so you were actually pretty close in your estimate. Annually, it is costing they taxpayers $100M which is a drop in the fiscal budget. The project is part of NASA's Discovery Program which funds low-cost (relative) missions to explore the solar system and the universe. Other missions launched under the Discovery Program include the Mars Pathfinder, the Deep Impact comet landing, and the Messenger probe of Mercury.

As for the debate of education vs. practicality, this project allows us the ability to actually find other planets in the universe. Little is known and this is the next step in creating a map of the cosmos. Will we ever go to one of the planet that we find? Probably not. Does it have a educational purpose and allow for our collective knowledge to expand? Yes.

In comparison, poetry does not yield practical results (i.e. we can't go and witness the actually Odyssey) but I would not suggest that we cut all funding to poetry because it doesn't result in a tangible result. Poetry allows for one's mind and imagination to run free. I get the same results from looking at the night skies through my telescope.

Out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on the Hubble telescope?

Jason P

In comparison, the NASA budget for 2010 is under $18 billion. http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/420990main_FY_201_%20Budget_Overview_1_Feb_2010.pdf.

Federal funding for education in 2010 is projected to receive $1,260 billion. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/.

With the educational value that NASA provides, I think you would be hurting education overall by picking their budget apart to put even more money into a federal education budget that most Americans think is stuck in the mud. NASA project increasing their annual budget to $21B by 2015. Education spending is projected to increase to $1,131 by 2015.

Please, go attack the defense budget first to help fund education. There is much more dinero over there :wave:

Hugh Freaking Dillon

in the last 100 years we have caused more damage to this planet than it would have sustained naturally in 10 times that amount of time.

while it is still a beautiful place, the junk heap we are creating is enormous and impossible to comprehend.

dunkman wrote:

Cosmo wrote:

Great... another planet we can fuck up. Awesome.

i personally don't think this planet is even close to being fucked up by us... we've at best caused it some slight scabbing... but Earth is a genuinely awesome and beautiful place.

Hugh Freaking Dillon

I agree about the defense issue. I was never saying that we should put NASA's money into education. I said it should go to helping where we live now, as opposed to finding a new place.

What scenario makes more sense: if you lived in a house on an island, and you were stupid enought to live that house into a state of disrepair, would you have

a)tried to fix that house first, living happliy ever after, or
b) would you have put on your glasses and searched the ocean for the possibility that there is another, very similar house close by that you could swim to?

I'm guessing A.

Jason P wrote:

In comparison, the NASA budget for 2010 is under $18 billion. http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/420990main_FY_201_%20Budget_Overview_1_Feb_2010.pdf.

Federal funding for education in 2010 is projected to receive $1,260 billion. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/.

With the educational value that NASA provides, I think you would be hurting education overall by picking their budget apart to put even more money into a federal education budget that most Americans think is stuck in the mud. NASA project increasing their annual budget to $21B by 2015. Education spending is projected to increase to $1,131 by 2015.

Please, go attack the defense budget first to help fund education. There is much more dinero over there :wave:

Jason P

Paul David wrote:

I don't know that you can actually equate the usefullness of poetry vs astronomy. Of course not everything we do or enjoy has a practical purpose, but poetry also doesn't cost that much money. I don't see any government agencies funding operations to eventually go back in time to where famous poems were first written. That's my point: what is the inherent purpose of going out into space? Mankind's ridiculous ego. Seinfeld put it best: there is no more male idea in the history of the world than "let's fly up to the moon and drive around".

Out of the trillion dollar education budget, what percentage is directed towards funding the arts? If it is even 1%, then that is $10 billion. I couldn't find a source to give me an exact number but I would hope it is at least 1%.

I hope this isn't viewed as bashing the arts, which I love. Both areas could use a boost in my opinion.

And the Kepler mission has nothing to do with sending man into space (which I think is waste of funding). So much more can be discovered via low-cost programs such as telescopes and probes.