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Record-Setting Fifth Planet Found Orbiting Nearby Star

RolandTD20KdrummerRolandTD20Kdrummer Posts: 13,066
edited November 2007 in A Moving Train
Are we really alone in this universe? I'm thinking statistically it would be rather unlikely that we are.

"A planet about 45 times as massive as Earth is now the fifth in a "family" of confirmed planets orbiting a nearby sunlike star, astronomers announced today at a press briefing.

The discovery marks the first quintuple planetary system ever found—other than our own—and it suggests that systems packed with planets might be much more abundant in the universe than previously believed."

""This discovery … has me jumping out my socks," said Geoff Marcy, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a member of the team that found the new world.

"We now know that our sun and its family of planets is not unusual" in the universe, he added "

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/11/071106-record-planet.html
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over specific principles, goals, and policies.

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Comments

  • AhnimusAhnimus Posts: 10,560
    Good example of a hidden variable.

    Other intelligent life in the universe? Perhaps. That's Carl Sagan's dream.

    But, let's suppose, by chance, all the conditions were perfect on this planet 11 lightyears from us and human-like intelligence exists there.

    Besides the theological implications which will be dismissed. What do we have to gain from it? We can send them a message using light that will take 11 years to get there, and hope that they happen to be observing it and able to decipher it. Then we wait 11 years for a response.

    We will never get there so buying real estate is a joke. As matter increases in speed it also increases in mass, matter traveling at the speed of light essentially has infinite mass. Our human husks could never travel at the speed of light.

    The distance to 55 Cancri is approx. 64,664,879,105,019 miles. The speed of sound is 769 mph, if we could travel at Mach 25 (25 times the speed of sound (19,225 mph)), it would take us approx. 383,970 years to get there.
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • who's_pearljam?who's_pearljam? Posts: 2,104
    Ahnimus wrote:

    The distance to 55 Cancri is approx. 64,664,879,105,019 miles. The speed of sound is 769 mph, if we could travel at Mach 25 (25 times the speed of sound (19,225 mph)), it would take us approx. 383,970 years to get there.



    Maybe we could e-mail them first to see if they're in. :)


    I'm sure there must be some form of life out there somewhere, and the other life would have to be far more advanced to figure out a possible way to get here. Time travel.
    Someday, someone will crack time travel. I'll be on that machine going back to 1980 or so, to pick up all the Microsoft stock I can muster up! :D
    Be kind, man
    Don't be mankind. ~Captain Beefheart
    __________________________________
  • AhnimusAhnimus Posts: 10,560
    who's_pearljam? wrote:
    Maybe we could e-mail them first to see if they're in. :)


    I'm sure there must be some form of life out there somewhere, and the other life would have to be far more advanced to figure out a possible way to get here. Time travel.
    Someday, someone will crack time travel. I'll be on that machine going back to 1980 or so, to pick up all the Microsoft stock I can muster up! :D

    If someday someone will crack time travel, then where are the people from the future?
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • who's_pearljam?who's_pearljam? Posts: 2,104
    Ahnimus wrote:
    If someday someone will crack time travel, then where are the people from the future?

    I know,,,, that's the hard part!
    Well, if they ARE out there, I bet they'll all be trying beat me to 1980 to get Microsoft stock. :) They'd push the price out of my reach, then I would have to rush back to 1978 and and change my bets on the craps table at Circus Circus in Vegas.

    They may be amongst us now, buying stock NOW! They would know something we didn't know. :cool:
    Be kind, man
    Don't be mankind. ~Captain Beefheart
    __________________________________
  • CollinCollin Posts: 4,931
    Sorry to disappoint you but Jean Claude Van Damme aka time cop would stop you.
    THANK YOU, LOSTDAWG!


    naděje umírá poslední
  • OutOfBreathOutOfBreath Posts: 1,804
    Ahnimus wrote:
    If someday someone will crack time travel, then where are the people from the future?
    How do you know they arent here? ;)

    But as for the subject of this thread, I think it's really cool they are finding other planets. Even if it might be forever until we can get there, if we ever can. Always been very interested in astronomy.

    Peace
    Dan
    "YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death

    "Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
  • know1know1 Posts: 6,794
    There could be other "life" already here among us....just life that is not within the range of our perception.
    The only people we should try to get even with...
    ...are those who've helped us.

    Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
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