Bear Down Wildcats

Even planetary scientist Alan Stern, the principal investigator for the New Horizons spacecraft, didn't agree with IAU's decision and claimed Pluto was booted out of its planetary status simply because of its distance from the sun.

"In fact, if you put Earth where Pluto is, it would be excluded!" Stern told CNN in January. "Any definition of planethood that excludes Earth, in any circumstance, is deeply flawed. After all, if there is any object everyone agrees is a planet, it's Earth."

Puerco wrote:Been really disturbed by the lack of anything new over the past week. Am now polishing up my tin foil hat...

Chicat wrote:

Puerco wrote:Been really disturbed by the lack of anything new over the past week. Am now polishing up my tin foil hat...

There's actually a bunch of new info on Charon and two of the other moons, one that's shaped like an oven mitt and the other that looks like a jelly bean.

Puerco wrote:Been really disturbed by the lack of anything new over the past week. Am now polishing up my tin foil hat...

ASUHATER! wrote:

Puerco wrote:Been really disturbed by the lack of anything new over the past week. Am now polishing up my tin foil hat...

It was well known that after a couple initial photos that it wouldn't be until September that the rest of the data would start coming.

(CNN)—NASA said Thursday that its Kepler spacecraft has spotted "Earth's bigger, older cousin": the first nearly Earth-size planet to be found in the habitable zone of a star similar to our own.

Though NASA can't say for sure whether the planet is rocky like ours or has water and air, it's the closest match yet found.

"Today, Earth is a little less lonely," Kepler researcher Jon Jenkins said.

The planet, Kepler-452b, is about 1,400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. It's about 60% bigger than Earth, NASA says, and is located in its star's habitable zone -- the region where life-sustaining liquid water is possible on the surface of a planet.

A visitor there would experience gravity about twice that of Earth's, and planetary scientists say the odds of it having a rocky surface are "better than even."

While it's a bit farther from its star than Earth is from the sun, its star is brighter, so the planet gets about the same amount of energy from its star as Earth does from the sun. And that sunlight would be very similar to Earth's, Jenkins said.

The planet "almost certainly has an atmosphere," Jenkins said, although scientists can't say what it's made of. But if the assumptions of planetary geologists are correct, he said, Kepler-452b's atmosphere would probably be thicker than Earth's, and it would have active volcanoes.

It takes 385 days for the planet to orbit its star, very similar to Earth's 365-day year, NASA said. And because it's spent so long orbiting in this zone -- 6 billion years -- it's had plenty of time to brew life, Jenkins said.

"That's substantial opportunity for life to arise, should all the necessary ingredients and conditions for life exist on this planet," he said in a statement.

Before the discovery of this planet, one called Kepler-186f was considered the most Earthlike, according to NASA. That planet, no more than a 10th bigger than Earth, is about 500 light-years away from us. But it gets only about a third of the energy from its star as Earth does from the sun, and noon there would look similar to the evening sky here, NASA says.

The $600 million Kepler mission launched in 2009 with a goal to survey a portion of the Milky Way for habitable planets.

From a vantage point 64 million miles from Earth, it scans the light from distant stars, looking for almost imperceptible drops in a star's brightness, suggesting a planet has passed in front of it.

It has discovered more than 1,000 planets. Twelve of those, including Kepler-425b, have been less than twice the size of Earth and in the habitable zones of the stars they orbit.

Missions are being readied to move scientists closer to the goal of finding yet more planets and cataloging their atmospheres and other characteristics.

In 2017, NASA plans to launch a planet-hunting satellite called TESS that will be able to provide scientists with more detail on the size, mass and atmospheres of planets circling distant stars.

The next year, the James Webb Space Telescope will go up. That platform, NASA says, will provide astonishing insights into other worlds, including their color, seasonal differences, weather and even the potential presence of vegetation.

Merkin wrote:Appears to be a Class M planet.

4 to beam down.





3 to beam up.

azcat49 wrote:So what now Hater? I assume it just hurdles through space as it runs out of fuel but will it be able to still take pictures and transmit those back?

There are a billion Earths in this galaxy, roughly speaking. Not a million. A billion. We’re talking 1 billion rocky planets that are approximately the size of the Earth and are orbiting familiar-looking yellow-sunshine stars in the orbital “habitable zone” where water could be liquid at the surface.

That’s a billion planets where human beings, or their genetically modified descendants, as well as their dogs and cats and tomato plants and crepe myrtle trees and ladybugs and earthworms and whatnot, could plausibly live.

Puerco wrote:Worm holes

Chicat wrote:Pluto has a . . . . . .

.......(wait for it)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . TAIL!

http://www.iflscience.com/space/plutos- ... comet-tail

ASUHATER! wrote:Which sadly does us diddly squat until we can go warp 5. Even going half the speed of light it would take us thousands of years to get to most of those planets.

The EM Drive (Electro Magnetic Drive) uses electromagnetic microwave cavities to directly convert electrical energy to thrust without the need to expel any propellant. First proposed by Satellite Propulsion Research, a research company based in the UK founded by aerospace engineer Roger Shawyer, the EM Drive concept was predictably scorned by much of the mainstream research community for allegedly violating the laws of physics, including the conservation of momentum.

However, NASA Eagleworks – an advanced propulsion research group led by Dr. Harold G. “Sonny” White at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) – investigated the EM Drive and presented encouraging test results in 2014 at the 50th Joint Propulsion Conference.

White proposes that the EM Drive’s thrust is due to virtual particles in the quantum vacuum that behave like propellant ions in magneto-hydrodynamical propulsion systems, extracting "fuel" from the very fabric of space-time and eliminating the need to carry propellant. While a number of scientists criticize White's theoretical model, others feel that he is at least pointing to the right direction. The NASASpaceFlight website and forums have emerged as unofficial news source and discussion space for all things related to the EM Drive and related breakthrough space propulsion proposals such as the Cannae Drive.

azgreg wrote:

ASUHATER! wrote:Which sadly does us diddly squat until we can go warp 5. Even going half the speed of light it would take us thousands of years to get to most of those planets.

Scientists Confirm 'Impossible' EM Drive Propulsion

https://hacked.com/scientists-confirm-i ... ropulsion/

The EM Drive (Electro Magnetic Drive) uses electromagnetic microwave cavities to directly convert electrical energy to thrust without the need to expel any propellant. First proposed by Satellite Propulsion Research, a research company based in the UK founded by aerospace engineer Roger Shawyer, the EM Drive concept was predictably scorned by much of the mainstream research community for allegedly violating the laws of physics, including the conservation of momentum.

However, NASA Eagleworks – an advanced propulsion research group led by Dr. Harold G. “Sonny” White at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) – investigated the EM Drive and presented encouraging test results in 2014 at the 50th Joint Propulsion Conference.

White proposes that the EM Drive’s thrust is due to virtual particles in the quantum vacuum that behave like propellant ions in magneto-hydrodynamical propulsion systems, extracting "fuel" from the very fabric of space-time and eliminating the need to carry propellant. While a number of scientists criticize White's theoretical model, others feel that he is at least pointing to the right direction. The NASASpaceFlight website and forums have emerged as unofficial news source and discussion space for all things related to the EM Drive and related breakthrough space propulsion proposals such as the Cannae Drive.

Exciting stuff just around the corner.

PieceOfMeat wrote:Interesting stuff, wish they'd updated the article post-presentation.

Still, seems unlikely to get us to another solar system, as the article mentions it doesn't get us to faster-than-light travel.

azgreg wrote:

PieceOfMeat wrote:Interesting stuff, wish they'd updated the article post-presentation.

Still, seems unlikely to get us to another solar system, as the article mentions it doesn't get us to faster-than-light travel.

Baby steps brother, baby steps. Just think, less then 300 years ago we were riding horses as our main form of transportation. Imagine where we will be in the next 300 years.

PieceOfMeat wrote:

azgreg wrote:

PieceOfMeat wrote:Interesting stuff, wish they'd updated the article post-presentation.

Still, seems unlikely to get us to another solar system, as the article mentions it doesn't get us to faster-than-light travel.

Baby steps brother, baby steps. Just think, less then 300 years ago we were riding horses as our main form of transportation. Imagine where we will be in the next 300 years.

Hopefully some of us will still be around at that time
http://www.sciencealert.com/immortality ... mitstart=1