"K-239 is about 160 light years away" Experiments keep confirming Einsteinian Relativity, so since it's all down to the observer, K-239 is roughly twice to Earth as close as Europe is to NZ (cattle class, of course)
Kepler finds three Earth-sized exoplanets, but they're too hot to handle
Astro-boffins poring over data from Kepler's K2 mission have spotted two new solar systems, one of them sporting three planets roughly the same size as Earth. The bad news is that all the latest discoveries are likely too hot for us, with temperatures between 100°C and 327°C. Announcing the results in a paper in the Monthly …
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Wednesday 13th June 2018 05:52 GMT John Smith 19
And still no messages from the stars....
Again this helps provide actual data for the Drake Equation (discounting the fact the search method does skew things in favor of gas giants).
So thumbs up for that.
Although the Fermi Paradox remains as paradoxical as ever.
Now all we need is the FTL/deep hibernation transport system to go there.
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Wednesday 13th June 2018 08:50 GMT tiggity
Re: And still no messages from the stars....
@John Smith 19
"Although the Fermi Paradox remains as paradoxical as ever."
"Now all we need is the FTL/deep hibernation transport system to go there."
Your second line is one reason why the Fermi paradox might not be a paradox (i.e. long distance space travel may be very difficult / not worth the effort)
.. alternatively if a civilization has mastered space travel, then maybe they have plenty of technology meaning they can "cloak" from our puny tech or study us from huge distances without us being aware.
I could go on, lots more reasons why it might not be much of a paradox (if human belligerence anything to go by, big destructive wars trashing your civilization such that it never reaches such heights again is a possibility - as a lot of stuff is "one shot" - on next go after calamity the low hanging fruit of easy fossil fuels etc. that make advances "easy" are probably long since gone, harvested in earlier civilization rise)
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Wednesday 13th June 2018 13:07 GMT onefang
Re: And still no messages from the stars....
'on next go after calamity the low hanging fruit of easy fossil fuels etc. that make advances "easy" are probably long since gone, harvested in earlier civilization rise)'
If there's a long enough pause between the civilizations, the earlier one becomes the fossil fuels for the next. The rest of the fossils might be a clue to the future archaeologists that something went horribly wrong last go around, perhaps they should be more careful this time?
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Wednesday 13th June 2018 14:00 GMT annodomini2
Re: And still no messages from the stars....
"If there's a long enough pause between the civilizations, the earlier one becomes the fossil fuels for the next. The rest of the fossils might be a clue to the future archaeologists that something went horribly wrong last go around, perhaps they should be more careful this time?"
Maybe that's what happened to the Dinosaurs? And we are just too arrogant to admit it?
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Wednesday 13th June 2018 15:53 GMT Alistair
Re: And still no messages from the stars....
@tiggity:
if human belligerence anything to go by, big destructive wars trashing your civilization such that it never reaches such heights again is a possibility - as a lot of stuff is "one shot" - on next go after calamity the low hanging fruit of easy fossil fuels etc. that make advances "easy" are probably long since gone, harvested in earlier civilization rise
Museums. Make them temples. The moties had the right idea.
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Wednesday 13th June 2018 14:40 GMT Stevie
Bah!
I renew my objection, M'lud, that if Pluto is not a planet because it "has not cleared its own orbit", and if, as is indisputably the case, we cannot determine by the current state of the art in telescopy whether or not these so-called "exo-planets" have cleared their orbits, we must regrettably deny them the appellation "planets" by the rules established by the likes of Mr deGrasse Tyson, considered an expert on matters of orbiting body classification those who care about orbit-clearing.
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Wednesday 13th June 2018 19:51 GMT Destroy All Monsters
"She turned me into a NYT"
Even if they weren't far too hot for us, distance would rule out the planets as destinations for rich people leaving “this wretched planet” (as the New York Times put it)
Ah, the New York Times.
They will be moaning about the utter lack of diversity on the space station and condemning implicit racism from above and why can't black people get affirmative space action?
(Unless it's a space station from that Mel Gibson movie, then uniformity is needed to attain universal balance because ... you know ... reparations ... and Trump)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
