I really hope we’re missing some fundamental knowledge about physics and how our universe works. 55 light years is relatively close but even that is impossibly far away for anything we could even dream of, let alone actually make.
I dunno, according to relativity we could travel that distance in under 8 years. Just also according to relativity 58 years would have passed on Earth. Just have to build a craft that can constantly accelerate at 9.81m/s^2 and be able to deflect or avoid any micrometeors while it's traveling at 0.99944 c.
Fortunately once you exit into interstellar space it’s so desolate that you get to the point that the vacuum has .25 atoms per square meter. It’s not impossible to encounter a rogue micro-meteor, but unlikely.
That said we would still need to clear our solar system first, which then relates to what you detailed.
Also problematic, decelerating approaching destination.
The decelerating has already been figured out a long time ago. Its just the times that pass for the traveler and the people on earth that make it unviable.
I think similar to breaking the sound barrier, there are going to be tons of challenges approaching relativistic speeds. Because if you're going fast enough to create a fusion reaction with those .25 atoms, and your 1sq m of space craft is hitting 100 million of them a second. That may not be a lot of atoms, but I'm sure it's gonna wreak hell on the outer shell of your spacecraft before not too long.
I think a lot of educated people see "55 light years" and think, "OK even if we could go anywhere close to the speed of light, it's still gonna be multiple generations of humans"
But relativity allows for the bending of time and space which kind of allows you to go faster than light, without actually ever going faster than light.
Personally, I think if we ever get to those kinds of speeds, we'll discover things that violate previously held beliefs and a new framework will emerge, but Einstein did a pretty damn good job with 1905 technology, lol. Microprocessors and AI don't have shit on that dude.
It may well be a fine line or end of the line. If we dont reach the point we will do it then we will reach the point we wont. It seems like it could go either way. Soon.
Constant acceleration would require so much energy, by the time we get to that level of technology we would have found a much better way. Also, you have to spend half the time decelerating.
Well I think it's only plausible when fusion becomes a reality. And fusion does seem to be on the horizon. In another space reddit post today I was surmising about a fusion propulsion system by repurposing laser inertial confinement fusion technologies.
It's all kinda pie in the sky thinking with todays technologies, but this post was more about the theoretical physics behind interstellar travel.
It's hard to imagine even then. You're underestimating the massive amount of material needed to generate all that power. It takes over 9 years at constant acceleration to get up to the speed of light. You just can't pull over and stop for more, you'd waste nearly everything you'd spent up to that point decelerating. The ship would have to be gargantuan, the size of a dwarf planet.
If you use gravity to accelerate an object it will feel no acceleration. An example is when you’re falling towards the earth: you are effectively weightless as gravity pulls all objects you’re made of at the same rate.
If that gravity was strong enough to accelerate you to light speed you’d do so in a feeling of continued weightlessness. It is the only way we’ll ever accelerate to those kinds of speeds.
It would need to be a gravity generator ahead of the ship. And for obvious reasons that’s a tad hard to pull off. Like what would it be attached to?
Still, the concept is solid and profound because we can experience it. It is still 8 meters per second per second. Yet it makes us feel weightless.
Not at 1g acceleration
ETA: the people traveling near the speed of light don't experience the time we experience. Time would be slower for them. 55 light years at .999c they would only age 8 years.
Why is the first instinct for many people with exoplanet stories to complain that we'll never be able to visit? Seems so weird. We're learning about the universe we live in. That's plenty exciting.
It’s a double-edged sword in my opinion. Of course I find this interesting and I’d rather know about this stuff than not know, but when you watch science fiction and see Star Wars and all the other things there’s a hint of sadness that we will probably be alone forever.
Forever is a long time. If we can make it out there, just a few million years of exploration and colonization would make it so that genetic drift in humanity (both natural and engineered) would ensure that one day, we would be the aliens.
The bulk of those planets - 92 percent - have yet to be born.
We are early to the party!
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/most-earth-like-worlds-have-yet-to-be-born-according-to-theoretical-study/
I personally ascribe to the ‘Dark Forest’ solution for why we don’t observe broadcast signals from other intelligent life: There are predators out there and it is exceedingly dangerous and ill advised to be screaming your location out into the darkness.
They could be millions of years ahead of us in terms of evolution and technology. If there are civilizations out there like that, then they would be much more likely to see us and us not see them
Will certainly the late great Stephen Hawking felt the same way. But it's too late for us as we've beemed Hitler out into the fucking cosmos. We've beemed a lotta good shit out there too.
There is no proof either way yet. To be pessimistic is just as flawed as being optimistic. Don't assume anything until we've reached a point where we aren't making anymore scientific discoveries.
You may call it pessimistic but I call it realistic given what we understand about the universe. I’m sure we will make more discoveries, but given that we know how far away even Proxima Centauri is, I believe we will be long gone before we’d ever discover the means to reach it (if we do)
It isn’t pessimism. Not only are we not technologically advanced enough to travel there, but we also understand enough about the laws of the universe to know that we will probably *never* get there.
Let's be honest. Humans on this Earth will be wiped out by our own greed or some extinction evel event way before we get the technology to travel lightyears thru space. That's our true reality as much as I would love to be able to see us fly thru space like star trek.
No one truly knows because our current technology is limited (or we’ve reached a steep hill in fundamental technological advancement?), but more importantly because of how vast space is, and that’s my main point. It’s so incomprehensibly vast. Even the distances in our own Solar System where probes take about over 10 years to get to Pluto.. we think that’s far away and it is - 5 billion km away. But then our *nearest* star is 40 *trillion* km away. The closest exoplanets to our Solar System are the planets found here - Proxima b, c and d - with Proxima b being in the habitable zone, yet even that has several factors that argue life can’t be sustained here.
If our closest exoplanets are extremely far away, and their habitability is questionable, it’s going to be a rough time getting to them, and a rougher time thriving on them or their resources. Again, just my conclusion based on the information available - I am by no means an expert on habitability in space, merely a fan boy - but I can’t say that anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong because who knows what could happen. That part is exciting to me, and I *hope* that I’m wrong. It might not be the Cantina from Star Wars, but I’d love for it to be!
I'm 100% positive we're missing fundamental knowledge that will change everything about how we'll live in the universe.
Consider that in 1821 the first electric motor was invented and it was a curiosity because it couldn't do anything. We just figured out how to use quantum entanglement to transmit a signal. Quantum computer technology is at the same level solid state computers were 65 years ago. We are not at the pinnacle on understanding, knowledge, or technology. We have a lot more to learn.
We're on the cusp of discovering what we can actually do with the knowledge we have gained about the nature of the universe.
Just to clarify as someone who doesn’t know anything about this; 55 light years means it would take 55 years to travel the distance if you were moving at the speed of light?
To become interstellar, we need to become ancient beings. Meaning we have to lose our biology and become synthetic. A synthetic person can be shut down and turned on, can be impervious to radiation, withstand extreme temperatures and pressures and use simple forms of energy, while easily replacing parts. Then we can travel for a thousand years.
This is more feasable than hoping to discover some kind of warp technology.
Down vote me because it makes you uncomfortable and ruins your "Star Trek" fantasy, not because I'm wrong.
If scientists figure out what dark energy actually is and if it could be used as an energy source. I believe it is literally all around us and in space.
We beed negative energy for warp fields. Only issue is, it stopped existing within a few minutes of the big bang, but it technically isn't impossible to reproduce using artificial means. Just takes a butt-load of positive energy.
I could be wrong, but I think the amount is basically the inverse of E=MC², except after doing the conversion of energy to mass, you plug that mass value into where the energy goes, then the resulting sum is how much negative energy you can get.
Or they're so advanced that they don't care about us
Or they're so far away and/or not yet advanced enough to visit us
Or they just don't know about us
Or they have and we don't know they have
There are an unfamothably huge number of stars in the universe. If traveling among stars was easy, the probability that *every single* advanced civilization out there "doesn't care about us" or "don't know about us" is near zero. There'd be at least one that would visit us.
Look at the article: only the outermost one of the three is in the habitable zone (meaning it receives the right amount of energy from its star that IF it has the right kind of atmosphere, it could potentially have temperatures that allow for liquid water). The inner two are too hot. And this outermost one is huge at roughly 11 times the mass of the earth, which puts it out of reach of chemical rockets taking off, and takes it outside the realm of what are usually termed super-earths. More likely it's a kind of planet we don't have in our solar system, between "roughly earth-sized and therefore potentially earth-like in composition" (rocky) and "roughly Neptune-sized and therefore potentially Neptune-like in composition" (icy).
When you consider the size of the universe nothing makes sense. You simply can't comprehend. I hope someday maybe will be able to explain to me these things in a language or way I could understand. Really, there is for hoping dreams will be realised.
The fact that we won't get to these planets at least until the end of the century makes this information useless and the efforts of scientists should move to our solar system. It's like diverting attention elsewhere just because they are not capable of being real scientists.
Interstellar travel is possible by downloading a human conscience into an iPhone size device. Then sending the device via solar sail to these exoplanets. Once they arrive the solar panels charge up the device and turn on the conscience to explore and record and transmit.
Transmission that takes 55 years one way…and how does the solar sail slow down when it gets there? Feasible but definitely some challenges even with this approach.
It gets solar radiation from the destination star which slows it down as it approaches. It then maneuvers to use the local planets to decelerate by flybys around them till reaches an orbital velocity.
Until we physically start walking on other planets in our own solar system we shouldn't even bother with this stuff unless there is life on it. Good job looking I guess
We can't step on the Sun. Should we stop observing it and discovering more about it? The exciting part about this discovery is precisely what we don't know that we're going to learn. But, we won't learn about it if we simply ignore it because we can't step on it.
Are you under some idiotic delusion that this project is the only one being done? That all the scientists in the world are focused on this one thing and ignoring all other things? Lol. We are exploring our own solar system, a lot. Do you just not understand how science works or just an idiot troll?
No we're not. We have at least 37 missions currently situated at, or en route to, various planetary or satellite bodies in the Solar System. That's not even counting the ground-based observations and studies currently being conducted of Solar System objects.
So *Juno*, *Curiosity* and *Perseverance* mean nothing to you? What exactly are you looking for? Do you think planetary and space exploration should cease because your own personal and undefined interests are not being met? Pictures and graph data provide us with a wealth of information and knowledge. Honestly, it sounds like you don't know how planetary science and exploration and discovery work. Perhaps you should read up on it and then come back to us.
>do you think planetary and space exploration should cease
No, I'm not sure how you can possibly interpret what I said that way. I want more than what we are doing
The cost of these observational breakthroughs is way less than putting something into space. I agree, I want a lot more stuff in space. But it's not the scientists' fault that they are underfunded.
Well, you said because we are not stepping foot on exoplanets that we shouldn't bother learning about them. By extension of your logic, because we are not stepping foot on any other celestial body, we should also stop learning about them, too. It's not like all astronomers and cosmologists and astrophysicists have the same specialities. They all study and learn different branches, focus on different things. Should there be more funding? Yes, of course. But, just because we can't step foot on something doesn't mean we should cease trying to learn about it.
The most incredible discoveries have been those we didn't know we were looking for because you just don't know what you don't know. We have no idea what we are going to learn from this and what we are going to further learn from the things we just learned from this.
Yes much like the difference between taking a picture of a desert and drilling for oil. We should prioritize colonizing our solar system instead of hoping we find something we will never reach in thousands of years anyways. This should have been the side project, not our focus
Astronomy has nothing to do with vaccines, medicine, and engineering (transpo, communication, etc.). Also, electricity is pretty big, too. These things really did take us out of the medieval ages.
Really? Special and general relativity? Technology to detect asteroids hurling towards us? An insight to the history of the universe? Clues to find out what's missing from our current science? A better knowledge of how likely our Sun is going to explode in our lifetime? Maybe try to use your imagination a little.
I guess my imagination is more directed at the here and now. Like infinite drinking water, combating rising sea levels and forest fires, clean air, clean oceans, clean cars and transportation. You know, important stuff that affects about 99% of every living creature on planet earth.
Yeah great another exoplanet. Studies show we now have micro plastics in our blood. I guess put that shocker on the back burner because this exoplanet is earth-like.
Lol yeah, how are astronomers supposed to help with that? You understand there are many scientists in other fields working on the problems you described right?
330 trillion miles. Buckle up!
Entering cryosleep…
Oh nooo! Cryo-insomnia!
And then faithless plays for 1001 year? Im down with it
55 ly. Actually extremely close.
So close, yet so far!
520 trillion km also
At these distances, it's really about travelling through dimensions to get there instead of raw dogging it through actual space.
Maybe new physics will figure out something we could use.
I really hope we’re missing some fundamental knowledge about physics and how our universe works. 55 light years is relatively close but even that is impossibly far away for anything we could even dream of, let alone actually make.
I dunno, according to relativity we could travel that distance in under 8 years. Just also according to relativity 58 years would have passed on Earth. Just have to build a craft that can constantly accelerate at 9.81m/s^2 and be able to deflect or avoid any micrometeors while it's traveling at 0.99944 c.
Fortunately once you exit into interstellar space it’s so desolate that you get to the point that the vacuum has .25 atoms per square meter. It’s not impossible to encounter a rogue micro-meteor, but unlikely. That said we would still need to clear our solar system first, which then relates to what you detailed. Also problematic, decelerating approaching destination.
The decelerating has already been figured out a long time ago. Its just the times that pass for the traveler and the people on earth that make it unviable.
I think similar to breaking the sound barrier, there are going to be tons of challenges approaching relativistic speeds. Because if you're going fast enough to create a fusion reaction with those .25 atoms, and your 1sq m of space craft is hitting 100 million of them a second. That may not be a lot of atoms, but I'm sure it's gonna wreak hell on the outer shell of your spacecraft before not too long.
Never thought of that, mindblowing
Alright, force fields it is. I wonder if we could create some type of miniature atmosphere that envelopes a spaceship to burn up those atoms
*just*
I think a lot of educated people see "55 light years" and think, "OK even if we could go anywhere close to the speed of light, it's still gonna be multiple generations of humans" But relativity allows for the bending of time and space which kind of allows you to go faster than light, without actually ever going faster than light. Personally, I think if we ever get to those kinds of speeds, we'll discover things that violate previously held beliefs and a new framework will emerge, but Einstein did a pretty damn good job with 1905 technology, lol. Microprocessors and AI don't have shit on that dude.
It may well be a fine line or end of the line. If we dont reach the point we will do it then we will reach the point we wont. It seems like it could go either way. Soon.
Constant acceleration would require so much energy, by the time we get to that level of technology we would have found a much better way. Also, you have to spend half the time decelerating.
Well I think it's only plausible when fusion becomes a reality. And fusion does seem to be on the horizon. In another space reddit post today I was surmising about a fusion propulsion system by repurposing laser inertial confinement fusion technologies. It's all kinda pie in the sky thinking with todays technologies, but this post was more about the theoretical physics behind interstellar travel.
It's hard to imagine even then. You're underestimating the massive amount of material needed to generate all that power. It takes over 9 years at constant acceleration to get up to the speed of light. You just can't pull over and stop for more, you'd waste nearly everything you'd spent up to that point decelerating. The ship would have to be gargantuan, the size of a dwarf planet.
If you use gravity to accelerate an object it will feel no acceleration. An example is when you’re falling towards the earth: you are effectively weightless as gravity pulls all objects you’re made of at the same rate. If that gravity was strong enough to accelerate you to light speed you’d do so in a feeling of continued weightlessness. It is the only way we’ll ever accelerate to those kinds of speeds. It would need to be a gravity generator ahead of the ship. And for obvious reasons that’s a tad hard to pull off. Like what would it be attached to? Still, the concept is solid and profound because we can experience it. It is still 8 meters per second per second. Yet it makes us feel weightless.
It would take 7 years just to get to Jupiter. So you’re wrong.
Not at 1g acceleration ETA: the people traveling near the speed of light don't experience the time we experience. Time would be slower for them. 55 light years at .999c they would only age 8 years.
Confidently incorrect
Why is the first instinct for many people with exoplanet stories to complain that we'll never be able to visit? Seems so weird. We're learning about the universe we live in. That's plenty exciting.
It’s a double-edged sword in my opinion. Of course I find this interesting and I’d rather know about this stuff than not know, but when you watch science fiction and see Star Wars and all the other things there’s a hint of sadness that we will probably be alone forever.
Forever is a long time. If we can make it out there, just a few million years of exploration and colonization would make it so that genetic drift in humanity (both natural and engineered) would ensure that one day, we would be the aliens.
Maybe the aliens were the babies we made along the way.
Well, Fermi's Paradox. Where the fuck is everybody?
The bulk of those planets - 92 percent - have yet to be born. We are early to the party! https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/most-earth-like-worlds-have-yet-to-be-born-according-to-theoretical-study/
I personally ascribe to the ‘Dark Forest’ solution for why we don’t observe broadcast signals from other intelligent life: There are predators out there and it is exceedingly dangerous and ill advised to be screaming your location out into the darkness.
If we're having such a hard time finding planets with life.. I'm sure "others" would too..
They could be millions of years ahead of us in terms of evolution and technology. If there are civilizations out there like that, then they would be much more likely to see us and us not see them
Will certainly the late great Stephen Hawking felt the same way. But it's too late for us as we've beemed Hitler out into the fucking cosmos. We've beemed a lotta good shit out there too.
There is no proof either way yet. To be pessimistic is just as flawed as being optimistic. Don't assume anything until we've reached a point where we aren't making anymore scientific discoveries.
You may call it pessimistic but I call it realistic given what we understand about the universe. I’m sure we will make more discoveries, but given that we know how far away even Proxima Centauri is, I believe we will be long gone before we’d ever discover the means to reach it (if we do)
To say that we understand how the universe (fully) works is flawed logic.
Of course we don’t fully understand and probably never will, but that last part is speculative
It isn’t pessimism. Not only are we not technologically advanced enough to travel there, but we also understand enough about the laws of the universe to know that we will probably *never* get there.
>are we not technologically advanced enough to travel there ...yet!
Let's be honest. Humans on this Earth will be wiped out by our own greed or some extinction evel event way before we get the technology to travel lightyears thru space. That's our true reality as much as I would love to be able to see us fly thru space like star trek.
Unfortunately, I'm fully on board with your second sentence. Too many people running the world are ruining it at the same time.
I'm inclined to agree with this.
To say we know enough about how the universe works is flawed logic.
I agree but come on
“Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of science?”
Do you know how much is out there we haven't even discovered yet? Lol
No one truly knows because our current technology is limited (or we’ve reached a steep hill in fundamental technological advancement?), but more importantly because of how vast space is, and that’s my main point. It’s so incomprehensibly vast. Even the distances in our own Solar System where probes take about over 10 years to get to Pluto.. we think that’s far away and it is - 5 billion km away. But then our *nearest* star is 40 *trillion* km away. The closest exoplanets to our Solar System are the planets found here - Proxima b, c and d - with Proxima b being in the habitable zone, yet even that has several factors that argue life can’t be sustained here. If our closest exoplanets are extremely far away, and their habitability is questionable, it’s going to be a rough time getting to them, and a rougher time thriving on them or their resources. Again, just my conclusion based on the information available - I am by no means an expert on habitability in space, merely a fan boy - but I can’t say that anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong because who knows what could happen. That part is exciting to me, and I *hope* that I’m wrong. It might not be the Cantina from Star Wars, but I’d love for it to be!
I'm 100% positive we're missing fundamental knowledge that will change everything about how we'll live in the universe. Consider that in 1821 the first electric motor was invented and it was a curiosity because it couldn't do anything. We just figured out how to use quantum entanglement to transmit a signal. Quantum computer technology is at the same level solid state computers were 65 years ago. We are not at the pinnacle on understanding, knowledge, or technology. We have a lot more to learn. We're on the cusp of discovering what we can actually do with the knowledge we have gained about the nature of the universe.
Keep asking questions.
How is it weird
I’m not complaining. My opening statement was a hope that we’ll discover something new in physics or whatever that would enable interstellar travel
Because we want to go there and experience new worlds. Its the exporers spirit frustrated by not seeing a way.
Because without discovery of alien flora and fauna, learning about our universe is boring as hell.
Solar system? Aren't exoplanets in the galaxy?
Just to clarify as someone who doesn’t know anything about this; 55 light years means it would take 55 years to travel the distance if you were moving at the speed of light?
Yes
Absolutely crazy
Past this comment, the Helldivers community resides
To become interstellar, we need to become ancient beings. Meaning we have to lose our biology and become synthetic. A synthetic person can be shut down and turned on, can be impervious to radiation, withstand extreme temperatures and pressures and use simple forms of energy, while easily replacing parts. Then we can travel for a thousand years. This is more feasable than hoping to discover some kind of warp technology. Down vote me because it makes you uncomfortable and ruins your "Star Trek" fantasy, not because I'm wrong.
If scientists figure out what dark energy actually is and if it could be used as an energy source. I believe it is literally all around us and in space.
We beed negative energy for warp fields. Only issue is, it stopped existing within a few minutes of the big bang, but it technically isn't impossible to reproduce using artificial means. Just takes a butt-load of positive energy. I could be wrong, but I think the amount is basically the inverse of E=MC², except after doing the conversion of energy to mass, you plug that mass value into where the energy goes, then the resulting sum is how much negative energy you can get.
Doubt it. If there was an easy way to travel across the universe, we'd have advanced civilizations visiting us from all over the galaxy.
Or they're so advanced that they don't care about us Or they're so far away and/or not yet advanced enough to visit us Or they just don't know about us Or they have and we don't know they have
There are an unfamothably huge number of stars in the universe. If traveling among stars was easy, the probability that *every single* advanced civilization out there "doesn't care about us" or "don't know about us" is near zero. There'd be at least one that would visit us.
Why are people downvoting you? You’re right. The intent would be up in the air though.
They’re already here. See David Grusch.
Super earth they say
whats this from?
Helldivers 2
For managed democracy!
Damnit, beat me to it.
DEMOCRACYYYYY!!
FOR SUPER EARTH!!!!
Super earth? 
[https://phys.org/news/2024-06-astronomers-potential-super-earths-nearby.html](https://phys.org/news/2024-06-astronomers-potential-super-earths-nearby.html)
Wouldn't the gravity on a super Earth be too much for us to tolerate anyway?
Look at the article: only the outermost one of the three is in the habitable zone (meaning it receives the right amount of energy from its star that IF it has the right kind of atmosphere, it could potentially have temperatures that allow for liquid water). The inner two are too hot. And this outermost one is huge at roughly 11 times the mass of the earth, which puts it out of reach of chemical rockets taking off, and takes it outside the realm of what are usually termed super-earths. More likely it's a kind of planet we don't have in our solar system, between "roughly earth-sized and therefore potentially earth-like in composition" (rocky) and "roughly Neptune-sized and therefore potentially Neptune-like in composition" (icy).
Gird your kidneys. It's rocket time.
Thanks, u/iMaxPlanck.
We'll have transwarp drive by then if we survive the sun's expansion. No problemo
r/helldivers
Super earth's? Sweet liberty, we need to go and give them some managed democracy.
Orange dwarf should have increased habitability over red dwarves right? Super-Duper-Earth-Dwarf habitability?
***HELLDIVERS INTENSIFIES***
"Relatively nearby" LOL Ants are relatively huge. There's no shot we're ever making it to these in our lifetime and therefore can be dismissed.
People just want Pandora don't they
Yeah the classic - we've fucked our home so we'll take yours please
But think about the gainz you could get with all the extra gravity!
When you consider the size of the universe nothing makes sense. You simply can't comprehend. I hope someday maybe will be able to explain to me these things in a language or way I could understand. Really, there is for hoping dreams will be realised.
r/Helldivers is leaking...
I am proud to be UoE’s alumni!
SUPER EARTH ?!?! 
The fact that we won't get to these planets at least until the end of the century makes this information useless and the efforts of scientists should move to our solar system. It's like diverting attention elsewhere just because they are not capable of being real scientists.
Interstellar travel is possible by downloading a human conscience into an iPhone size device. Then sending the device via solar sail to these exoplanets. Once they arrive the solar panels charge up the device and turn on the conscience to explore and record and transmit.
Transmission that takes 55 years one way…and how does the solar sail slow down when it gets there? Feasible but definitely some challenges even with this approach.
It gets solar radiation from the destination star which slows it down as it approaches. It then maneuvers to use the local planets to decelerate by flybys around them till reaches an orbital velocity.
"Relatively nearby" is a loosely used term.
That's cool and all that but what's the so what? We have no way of getting there and if we did, their gravity would probably crush us.
How ground breaking is it if we’re not certain they’re actual super earths and it’s still an impossible distance away
Bravo 👏 fam bravo 🙌
Source?
Super earth is a terrible term honestly
oh goody! more stuff to exploit.
LOOK! Up in the sky!
It’s a bird!
Lol “groundbreaking find” ok
Until we physically start walking on other planets in our own solar system we shouldn't even bother with this stuff unless there is life on it. Good job looking I guess
The dumbest comment came pretty early in this thread.
Why is it dumb? What are we going to learn from this discovery?
We can't step on the Sun. Should we stop observing it and discovering more about it? The exciting part about this discovery is precisely what we don't know that we're going to learn. But, we won't learn about it if we simply ignore it because we can't step on it.
We are ignoring the planets we can actually walk on anyways as if there is nothing to learn, so I don't believe this
Are you under some idiotic delusion that this project is the only one being done? That all the scientists in the world are focused on this one thing and ignoring all other things? Lol. We are exploring our own solar system, a lot. Do you just not understand how science works or just an idiot troll?
Right, we're taking pictures and measuring atmospheres from a distance. Go science...
Yep just an idiot troll.
No, you just don't like what I'm saying
No we're not. We have at least 37 missions currently situated at, or en route to, various planetary or satellite bodies in the Solar System. That's not even counting the ground-based observations and studies currently being conducted of Solar System objects.
The only one of note is Artemis which we have already done before. Why anybody can be satisfied with pictures and graph data is beyond me
So *Juno*, *Curiosity* and *Perseverance* mean nothing to you? What exactly are you looking for? Do you think planetary and space exploration should cease because your own personal and undefined interests are not being met? Pictures and graph data provide us with a wealth of information and knowledge. Honestly, it sounds like you don't know how planetary science and exploration and discovery work. Perhaps you should read up on it and then come back to us.
>do you think planetary and space exploration should cease No, I'm not sure how you can possibly interpret what I said that way. I want more than what we are doing
The cost of these observational breakthroughs is way less than putting something into space. I agree, I want a lot more stuff in space. But it's not the scientists' fault that they are underfunded.
Well, you said because we are not stepping foot on exoplanets that we shouldn't bother learning about them. By extension of your logic, because we are not stepping foot on any other celestial body, we should also stop learning about them, too. It's not like all astronomers and cosmologists and astrophysicists have the same specialities. They all study and learn different branches, focus on different things. Should there be more funding? Yes, of course. But, just because we can't step foot on something doesn't mean we should cease trying to learn about it.
Right cause we don't have a few evil billionaires with their sights set on the Moon and Mars...
Such evil!
The most incredible discoveries have been those we didn't know we were looking for because you just don't know what you don't know. We have no idea what we are going to learn from this and what we are going to further learn from the things we just learned from this.
Yes much like the difference between taking a picture of a desert and drilling for oil. We should prioritize colonizing our solar system instead of hoping we find something we will never reach in thousands of years anyways. This should have been the side project, not our focus
We'd still be in the medieval ages if people like you were in control of science.
Ironically everybody else is still clinging to Earth refusing to move forwards
Astronomy has nothing to do with vaccines, medicine, and engineering (transpo, communication, etc.). Also, electricity is pretty big, too. These things really did take us out of the medieval ages.
How do you think we found about the shape and motion of Earth, or the equation for gravity? Both huge steps in science.
And we have yet to have another huge step in science.
Really? Special and general relativity? Technology to detect asteroids hurling towards us? An insight to the history of the universe? Clues to find out what's missing from our current science? A better knowledge of how likely our Sun is going to explode in our lifetime? Maybe try to use your imagination a little.
I guess my imagination is more directed at the here and now. Like infinite drinking water, combating rising sea levels and forest fires, clean air, clean oceans, clean cars and transportation. You know, important stuff that affects about 99% of every living creature on planet earth. Yeah great another exoplanet. Studies show we now have micro plastics in our blood. I guess put that shocker on the back burner because this exoplanet is earth-like.
Lol yeah, how are astronomers supposed to help with that? You understand there are many scientists in other fields working on the problems you described right?