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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Jan 12, 2016 - 09:24pm PT
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Mike, it is extremely difficult to detect planets the size of earth with the present state of equipment. However, as of 2016 500 of the nearly 1300 stars with detected planets are multi planet systems.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 13, 2016 - 12:23am PT
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Rick, you do know that Mike Bolte is an astronomer by profession, and not "just" an astronomer...
he is well aware of the planet finding capability at the current state-of-the-art, and of what is on the drawing boards... and everything in between...
you might listen to what he says...
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Jan 13, 2016 - 03:49am PT
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Ed,
zero in fellow.
specifically, a cell wall membrane, nothing here to do with how thick a skin cell is. There are no dead skin layers on the cell wall membrane of single cell animals.
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Larry Nelson
Social climber
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Jan 13, 2016 - 06:55am PT
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I've been enjoying this discussion for some time. Thanks to Ed Hartouni and all of his great posts. Truly a valuable ST resource.
So we have lots of time to figure out how to travel beyond our solar system, but it won't happen soon.
Who's out there? Who knows? I am agnostic.
In the near term we need to think cost/benefit, and manned exploration really lowers the bang for the buck.
I used to subscribe to Rick Sumner's ideas on mining the solar system, but the revolution in nano-technology is changing my perception. They have finally fabricated nano-structures strong enough to consider for the space elevator.
There yet may be an economical way to mine, but that is beyond our lifetimes.
I also think that manufacturing in a gravity free environment is a viable future.
Perfect ball bearings, chemical compounds, etc.
As far as travel to the nearest stars?
Technology we can barely dream of will no doubt play a part. Maybe even Werner's sound vibrations.
So in the Grand Unification theory, we still don't know squat about gravity.
This story, or rumor, just came out on detecting gravity waves. Good stuff.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/12/gravitation-waves-signal-rumoured-science
Some background on the LIGO
https://www.advancedligo.mit.edu/
A good PBS background
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2014/11/theres-more-than-one-way-to-hunt-for-gravitational-waves/
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Jan 13, 2016 - 08:40am PT
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Thanks Ed. Please excuse me Mike, I was just going off a few articles I read. Please continue.
Come on Larry, where's the enthusiasm? The delay in the exploration and utilization of the systems vast resources seems to me to be a result of attutude. In this information age the populace has made a collective, unconscious turn inward. We need to wake up the pioneering spirit again for true satisfaction and realization of potential. Otherwise we stagnate, sicken and die.
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Larry Nelson
Social climber
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Jan 13, 2016 - 02:44pm PT
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Hey Rick,
LOL, yeah I do like pioneering spirits.
Travel beyond the solar system probably won't be human.
Working our own solar system is in our relatively near future.
A space elevator may be an important first step in that future...although there are still many technical and engineering unknowns in the elevator.
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Jan 13, 2016 - 04:20pm PT
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My understanding of how Kepler works, is it's measuring dimming of stellar light cause by the passage of planets between the star and the Kepler satellite. It's called the occultation method. This works only due to fortuitous orientation of the planetary orbit, as most of the planets are simply not observed due to unfavorable geometry of their orbits. Add in the small sector of sky being monitored by this satellite observatory, and the enormity of the galaxy and stars with planetary systems becomes mind boggling.
Frankly, I'd rather see my tax dollars being spent this way instead of more smart bombs.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Jan 14, 2016 - 07:10am PT
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Good to know there are groups of people dedicated to brainstorming exploration at the edge of possibility. I had no idea that such velocities could be achieved using gravity assist slingshots combined with the extra kick of conventional rocketry. When I was young I always heard of fusion ram jets and light sails. Of course if you physics guys actually crack the secrets of gravity perhaps some loopholes could be realized there.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 14, 2016 - 08:17am PT
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time travel to the past, which is what superluminal space craft engage in, is probably not likely... it violates causality, and causality seems to be fundamental... there is a future, a now and a past which are well defined, always.
without knowing the details, you might posit that no matter what you do (e.g. "warp" space-time), you cannot go from point A to point B faster than the speed-of-light.
if that is true, that doesn't rule out the possibility that we could survive very long voyage. the dilation of time which a moving body experiences prolongs it's lifetime as we observe it... a muon is a particle very much like a heavy electron. it experiences radioactive decay to an electron in a lifetime of 2.2 microseconds. The speed of light is 984 feet per microsecond so you'd expect the muon to travel only about 2200 feet, yet muons produced in the upper atmosphere easily make it to the surface, because of special relativity... their clocks appear to slow down to us.
so if you can get close to the speed of light, the time in the "rest frame" of the universe seems to slow down. Say you want to slow your clock down by a factor of 10... you'd need to be going at 99.5% of the speed-of-light...
just how you do this is open to question... and those 10 years are 100 years back on Earth, so a return trip takes you to a place that you don't really know... but you'd be able to go out roughly 99.5 light years and back in 20 years of your time, but 200 years of Earth time.
this opens the question, in such a future, of visits from "extra terrestrials" who actually left the Earth and return in a future that forgot about them...
Now all you have to figure out is how to accelerate and decelerate to speeds near the speed-of-light... gravity assist might be an answer but how to make the very deep "gravitational wells" required?
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Jan 14, 2016 - 09:16am PT
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Yes, I can hear the standard 23rd century voyagers farewell now: may your days be long and gravity always well before you.
As far as violation of physical laws and causality goes: no matter what mathematical and intellectual gymnastics one engages in; our understanding is woefully insufficient to explain our reference points basis of all thoughts processes necessary to justify a beginning and direction to time and space. IMO physics is in infancy still with a very long life ahead. Just my ignorant (mis)understanding of course.
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 14, 2016 - 09:43am PT
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Thru yogic sound vibration mantra one can travel to anywhere in the cosmos instantly.
Modern cave men science is always clueless and does everything wrong .....
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Jan 14, 2016 - 09:55am PT
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The science of "Physics as We Know It" is still in a relative infancy, with true beginnings with the experiments of Galileo in the late 1500s. Newton really set things on the correct course by mathematically formulating what is now called Analytical Mechanics; i.e. "A body in motion tends to remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force." His breakthoughs in Optics were phenomenal and led to the science of Spectroscopy. Physics is really the science of measurement, but no one in the beginning could ever conceive of the sheer magnitude of the universe as we currently understand it So...in just 500 years we have progressed to just the tip of the iceberg of understanding the true nature of the Cosmos.
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 14, 2016 - 10:09am PT
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.in just 500 years we have progressed
That 'we' is western gross materialistic science only which is very poor crude cave man science using stone age tools ...
The intelligent class have been doing science for billions of years ....
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Jan 14, 2016 - 10:17am PT
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Yeah HFCS. Didn't view it, but some of Ed's recent posts referencing pop science articles were like somebody stole his identity.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jan 14, 2016 - 12:21pm PT
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I'll post this here since the religious thread has been taken over by, well... the supernaturalists.
Rick, when you post of causality, space travel, evolution and a hopeful future based on our species getting its act together (granted, not guaranteed) you are speaking my passions.
Regarding causality, the illusion of free will and pop science or pop philos videos, you might enjoy this one, if you haven't already, when you got the time. Sam Harris is always worth the return on investment....
[Click to View YouTube Video]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCofmZlC72g
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Jan 15, 2016 - 07:34am PT
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no matter what mathematical and intellectual gymnastics one engages in
Rick, and you are doing even less than what you have suggested in the above quote, as for using the tools of physics to enhance your understanding.
Get a clue: Do you Understand the tool/idea of Entropy? The likely hood of the exact same particle arrangement for the universe at some future time/space configuration is about identically zero. Furthermore, what would keep track of this arrangement -- a lot of information for the map.
It seems you are just engaging in the "what if" question since you are using the "anything is possible" type thinking. Generally speaking, if any processes are[currently] possible they are already happening on some scale some where, now.
A thought problem 4 U: Can a shaft both be rotating both forward and backward at the same time? If your answer is yes, you likely have no understanding of calculus, the root tool of physics.
But, You might try to understand what is the nature of Becoming. That is how do thing come about?
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