Space.com: NASA’s newest planet hunter just bagged some big game.
For the first time, the agency’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered a roughly Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of its host star, the zone of orbital distances where liquid water could be stable on a world’s surface, researchers announced today (Jan. 6).
The newfound exoplanet, known as TOI 700 d, lies just 101.5 light-years from Earth, making it a good candidate for follow-up observations by other instruments, scientists added.
“TESS was designed and launched specifically to find Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby stars,” Paul Hertz, astrophysics division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in a statement. “Planets around nearby stars are easiest to follow up with larger telescopes in space and on Earth. Discovering TOI 700 d is a key science finding for TESS.”
TESS, which launched in April 2018, hunts for planets using the “transit method,” looking for telltale dips in stellar brightness caused by orbiting worlds crossing stars’ faces from the satellite’s perspective. This same strategy was used to great effect by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, which discovered about 70% of the roughly 4,000 known exoplanets. read more
So lets send some humans to exploit it and change it into a clone of earth.
Planet Hollywood. Let em go.
“Canada?! Hell, no, I’m moving to another planet if Trump gets re-elected.”
Good luck getting there since it will take forever. Even if they could travel at the speed of light (which is physically impossible) it would still take them 101.5 years to get there. And HAl would’ve sabotaged and killed all those cryogenically frozen passenger/star voyagers way before they even got there. Maybe they should try astral projection with some sitar music and all chant Om, Om etc. and pretend that they got there. I’m sure Mary Ann Williamson would be glad to be their tour guide. WHAT A BUNCH OF NEW AGE MUMBO JUMBO HOOIE! Even L Ron Hubbard couldn’t script a crap scifi story that bad.
It will be much better when NASA completes it.s “McDonald’s on Mars” mission.
Proof that ancient Martians develop the same food that we have.
Send a few shiploads of breeding age conservatives to provide an outpost for our species after liberals screw up Earth. Do NOT send liberal women. They are not as smart and beautiful as conservative women. Nobody will want to procreate with the libs, so the whole ‘lifeboat Earth’ experiment would fail.
Venus is also in the habitable zone of a star.
Note that the very heavens are full of the gift of life, and we will also see that we are either the first in our area to rise to our level, or we are a very, very rare occurrence
Update: Local ‘boy’ (to me) discovers planet:
https://nypost.com/2020/01/08/scarsdale-teen-discovers-new-planet-while-interning-at-nasa/
We weren’t made or intended to get off this planet. No other planet suits humans. It takes too long to get there, and once there our sinful nature takes over to destroy rather to live. There’s a reason why we’re here and not there and why it took mankind thousands of years to get where we’re at today. Scientists can dream on. We weren’t made to leave earth. Jmho
Interesting, but we have no way of getting there or even knowing if it still exists.
Ok, there’s something in orbit around a star 100 light years away. Now we need to know if a couple thousand other variables are the same as earth and our sun. Not bloody likely. Too many of our objective scientists watched too much sci-fi.
@geoff the aardvark:
“Even if they could travel at the speed of light (which is physically impossible) it would still take them 101.5 years to get there.”
101.5 years on an Earth clock.
But their clock experiences zero years as they approach the speed of light:
γ = 1 / √( 1 – (v²/c²) )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation
The Lorentz transform on a political blog. I’m in heaven!
Next up: the Ricci tensor.
Ain’t the Universe great, Sturge?!
But I’ll defer to you on the Ricci tensor. Ricci is above my paygrade:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricci_curvature
@Jimmy
You’ll come across it in string theory and its derivatives. I *really* don’t like ST (minimum 11 dimensions), but it’s the best we’ve got right now. Regardless of what I think of its veracity, it’s fascinating to consider and challenging to play with.
FWIW, Ricci’s work describes a curve in space of a particular definition. The tensor describes the “tension” between that curve and the same curve in Newtonian space. Oversimplified, but useful to start.
Thanks, Sturge. Now I have to go to sleep tonight thinking about it and try to remember the tensor Calculus I learned – and have forgotten – years ago. There is a particular sub-problem in GR that has bugged me for 40 years and I would love to pick some theorist’s brain about it… Alas, I should be too old now to care anymore…
@Dbad ~ “… not as smart and beautiful as conservative women”
amen to that … Dejah Thoris was no libtard!
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5Yi1iXITgdA/T1dF-t0T16I/AAAAAAAAKuM/RdAktneS6xE/s1600/john-carter-of-mars+frazetta+textless.jpg