The Space thread

[mikechamp]

It would only take 30 really long lifetimes traveling at light speed to get there, but hey!!

Astronomers have discovered a star and potentially habitable planet that are strikingly similar to the sun and Earth

Scientists have found a potentially habitable exoplanet and its star that are more similar to the Earth and our sun than any other known planet-star pair. The planet — which is still considered a planet candidate until further confirmation — is the right distance from its star to allow for the presence of liquid surface water. That means it could potentially host life. The Earth-like world is about 1.9 times the size of our planet.

The system is about 3,000 light-years away from our solar system. Future space telescopes could someday study it in more detail.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/astronomers- ... 00655.html

[go birds]

we really need to figure out how to travel at light speed--thats just my opinion!

[mikechamp]

we really need to figure out how to travel at light speed--thats just my opinion!

Totally!! The number of other planets we could trash is endless!!!!!





Oh, wait....




Just kidding around... kind of. I actually agree it would be pretty cool, but it would probably also have negative consequences, too.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

I forget, if you travel at light speed, does time, relatively, pass slower? So, if you travel at light speed and go to a place 1 light year away, it takes 1 year according to people on earth, but it takes less time for the person travelling?

[mikechamp]

The Sun just got its close-up:

This Is the Closest Image of the Sun Ever Taken. Ever.

NASA and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Solar Orbiter spacecraft is making a beeline for the sun. On the way there, it's managed to snap some incredible photos.

Today, the space agencies have announced that Solar Orbiter has taken the closest ever-image of the sun. The stunning photo and other images were taken during the spacecraft's inaugural close encounter with the sun, known as perihelion, in mid-June and capture a number of new, strange phenomena never before seen on the star at the center of our solar system.

"When you look at [the sun] at high resolution, it's amazing in the smallest details how much stuff is going on there," David Berghmans, the principal investigator of the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, said in a July 16 press conference. "We couldn't believe this when we first saw it."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/closest-imag ... 00765.html

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

I just pooped my pants a bit.

[Leroy]

We had joy, we had fun,
We flew spaceships in the sun.

[Leroy]

I didn't expect to see a huge arrow there.

[haltz]

I forget, if you travel at light speed, does time, relatively, pass slower? So, if you travel at light speed and go to a place 1 light year away, it takes 1 year according to people on earth, but it takes less time for the person travelling?

It passes slower, relatively, but the way I understand it is that it takes the traveler a year to get there, but since their clock is slowed down for the people on earth it will take a lot longer. You're gone for a few years (whatever the math is) and when you get back your kids are older than you are.

[haltz]

Not sure if the PBS Space Time videos have ever been linked here or not, but they're really good.