sure, but that's old news. ;-P

Tidally locked planet's can't support life. All the atmosphere -- assuming IT'S habitable -- migrates to the colder side and freezes. Of course, the atmosphere would include all the planet's water vapor which, of course, this planet may not even have.

We've already been through this with Gliese 581c-f. This is the same star, the same solar system, same announcement, same pretty (imaginary) picture, they just keep going up the alphabet. And let's face it, even if life did appear on that planet, it would have been completely evaporated by the sun when it was EM emitter.

I have a question, would osmosis be possible? (yes i know its a biology term) but planetary osmoses lets say the side with light is to hot and it keeps the atmosphere from going there cause it is "too full" (with heat essentially) of stuff, so it goes to the dark side (no star war comments please) then that side become's over saturated. now lets say the one side is always pointing at the sun, if there is no moon orbiting it the sun wouldn't be blocked out by it and that side would stay lighted, so there would have to be a "green" or as they said a Goldilocks zone where the too extremes meet and even out well some of the super saturated atmosphere would melt and evaporate and become atmosphere in that green band. becuase there would be room for the atmosphere to be there. (the passage of a solvent through a semipermeable membranefrom a less concentrated to a more

concentrated solution untilboth solutions are of the same concentration definition of osmosis here.) now lets say life never got started there well you shoot a pod of seeds there and bam! there you go life. (the pod would probably spay them in some way... aerosol maybe? no wait the ozone.. lol) but that would be Terra forming then you would have to wait a long long time for the seeds to grow (hopefully) and produce oxygen. so lets hope life is there in some way or we will have to wait thousands of years for the oxygen levels to rise. and ill gladly awnsear questions please ask me some lol

Wouldn't there be atmospheric currents to distribute the heat between the cold and hot sides? And the same if there are seas? I wish the author had better defined hellishly hot and unendurably cold. Are we talking Crematoria hot on the day side? Also, the planet has much stronger gravity than Earth. How would this affect wind patterns and sea currents, to say nothing of evaporation rates and cloud cover? It might even have a moon or two which wouldn't have to be locked in to the planet, meaning possible tides. With so little known about it, I find it hard to come to a conclusion one way or the other. This is not a cartoon planet. This is a real place and probably a far more complicated system then we think.

Michel : I would have to agree. With the temperature gradients from the hot side to the cold side I could imagine tremendous winds, but the truth is I don't think anyone has a clear picture as to what the weather might be on a planet with more gravity than Earth, what the gravitational force from being closer to its star might do, whether it has an atmosphere and how dense it is. Being in the zone that water can be liquid alone is not enough to say that life could exist, but the fact that this system is 20 light years away, whets the appetite of curiosity.

I think it would be very stormy at the boundries. It does seem plausible that there could be something. I guess it would also depend on many other factors, but I would sure love to see it up close.

I personally doubt much if any life exists on the planet, but as for the atmosphere there. Just pretending it has an atmosphere like what we have, on the hot liquid water wouldn't exist, and it would migrate towards the cold side. But not all of it would get trapped there forever. There would always be some sort of equilibrium where water would make it back into the atmosphere. Also, in order for that water to make it from the hot side to the frozen side, it would have to cross the just right edges. So I can certainly see liquid water existing in a small sliver of the planet.

Life might exist there. I doubt it would be anything more than microbes. But at this moment I doubt it. I certainly am not going to say it is 100% like the person in the article states. I'd more likely believe there is a 100% chance of life on one of Jupiter's moons. BTW, last night I looked up at Jupiter and saw the 4 major moons and a band across the planet. It was an awesome experience considering the dinky telescope I have. Was found on the side of the road next to trash cans.

Don't worry about God. Most nanospecks on microspeck Earth know God can't be real. Pretty false-color edited space stuff pictures be proof.

"only 20 light-years from Earth"

Lets see, light speed is about 186,000 miles per second. That's 671,000,000 miles per hour.That's 16,104,000,000 (yes billion) miles per year. Now that's times 20 years, which is 322,080,000,000 years from earth. With our current technology today we can only travel at speeds up around 150,000 miles per hour. So that means we could be there in somewhere around 2 million years. Only 20 light years away?

only extremely limited mined people with just as equally limited intelligence think that earth is the only planet with life in the vastness of the cosmos. Even if it is not this planet.

Does this mean God hates us

Oh here come the religion haters! Stop bringing god into everything!!!

I heard the latest update said that contact has been made with intelligent life on the Goldilocks Planet. The translation appears to be, "come all, you are welcome... just please leave obama on earth!" Scientists and linguists are still working on the translation...

All kidding aside, even if it is "liveable" if it's THAT MANY LIGHT YEARS AWAY why would we care about it about supporting our life? You'll never be able to reach it.

Because astronomically speaking, 20 light years away is nothing.

TexasZ: "Lets see, light speed is about 186,000 miles per second. That's 671,000,000 miles per hour.That's 16,104,000,000 (yes billion) miles per year. Now that's times 20 years, which is 322,080,000,000 years from earth. With our current technology today we can only travel at speeds up around 150,000 miles per hour. So that means we could be there in somewhere around 2 million years. Only 20 light years away?"

I got 117,394,272,000,000 miles. At a rate of 150,000 miles per hour, I get 89,280 years.

If it were your number of only 322,080,000,000 miles, that would be roughly 245 years, not 2 million.

The article said something about traveling at 1/10 the speed of light, which is 66,960,000 miles per hour.

I suspect that when he said "Only 20 light years" he was implying that this is very close to us when compared with the size of the visible universe and if we can find a planet that can harbor life (whether or not this one can I don't know) and that is that close to us (compared with the vast distances separating us and the rest of the universe) that increases the likelihood that there are lots of planets out there like this one. Of course 20 light years away is a rediculous distance for a human or anything made by a human to travel. But I am pretty sure that was not the point.

Interesting quote from Professor Steven Vogt who's team discovered Gliese 581g:

In an interview with Lisa-Joy Zgorski of the National Science Foundation, Steven Vogt was asked what he thought about the chances of life existing on Gliese 581 g. Vogt was optimistic: "I'm not a biologist, nor do I want to play one on TV. Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say that, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100%. I have almost no doubt about it."

from: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/science/space/30planet.html?_r=1

At about three Earth masses, are you sure you'd want to?

Let's see, wouldn't we all weigh about three times what we weigh now. how long would we last?

I guess that depends on whether Jenny Craig was on the first transport ship? Maybe we could send Sen. John Bohner - that old gas bag would probably have a normal weight on that planet.

Too far to relocate? Not so sure. It might seem like sci-fi, but if we really screw this place up we might have to start seriously thinking about it. A "space ark" a la Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama might not be completely implausible.

If you haven't read that one, it involves a gigantic "space cylinder" with habitable area on the inside surface which rotates to simulate gravity as it accelerates slowly and continuously towards it's destination. Takes a long time, many, many human generations to get there, but it does.

Yes 20 years to get there IF we had a spacecraft that could travel at light speed. Like ALF used to say: "Ha! Fat chance!"

just because it's got 3 times the mass of earth does not mean the gravity is 3 times stronger, jupiter has over 300 times the mass of earth but it's surface gravity is only 2.52g's. Density plays a pretty large part for example uranus has about 14 times earths mass but its surface gravity is actually less than ours.

Jupiter's... surface gravity? You know Jupiter doesn't have a surface, right?

Neither does Uranus, Neptune or Saturn for that matter.

i believe he means its gravity pull in general. i also believe he is correct however.

well...we could always use it as a drop off place for the Illegals.

Surface gravity of a gas planet is measured at the radius at which the atmospheric pressure is equal to one Earth atmosphere at seal level. The More You Know!

Astronomy1677943.

I can't believe you actually injected politics into this! You have to be the biggest loser on Earth.

Solyent : Actually planetary scientists believe that Jupiter's core is possibly a rock core surrounded by metallic hydrogen. It is thought that this metallic hydrogen is what causes the intense magnetic fields around Jupiter.

Space planet people have to believe in something to keep getting they tax-paid incomes. We're better off today because of all them space words they give us. Your boss likes you more because of the knowledge of nebulas.

Ok, so far you have only attempted to insult. Don't you have anything better to do? If this "space stuff" isn't for you, then maybe you should check out a book at your local library, and start from square 1.

Yeah, it's not like expanding our view into space ever taught us anything... like Hydrogen. As well as all the side effects such as everything from the space program at Nasa.

Seems like Imagine-Goodness would just like to sit in a bubble of unchanging information. Meanwhile the rest of us want to expand our knowledge.

If you were listening to our broadcasts would you answer us?

I probably would answer, but it'd be in that indignant tone i give to the telemarketers who call after 5pm on a Sunday.

I thought SETI determined that radio waves dissipate at about 1 lightyear?

Standindwave: If that was the case, then radio astronomy would be worthless. Actually radio waves are electromagnetic waves, as is light, they are just at different wavelengths.

R Bynum, I realize you were probably making a joke, but think about it. Let's assume they could interpret the signal. What would they hear? Inane entertainment (fart jokes and sexual innuendo), political factions shouting back and forth at each other. Religious intolerance, Catholics vs Protestants, Muslims vs...well..everybody (Specifically, Jews, Hindus, Christians, Sunni vs Shia). What would they think of all that?

No, really, what would you think if we intercepted communications from another inhabited planet and heard all that nonesense? We we dismiss it as the pointless buzzing of insects? What?

If Stephen Hawking is correct they'll probably dismiss us a minimaly intelligent and wonder if we taste like chicken. Abundant food supply and ALL THAT WATER!

Seriously, think about that for just a minute.

What do you think when you hear the neighbors yelling at one another?

That would be a very good definition of life as we know it.

Skip, why do you assume the aliens would be more sophisticated than us? Maybe they would think fart jokes are hilarious. Maybe they would be inspired by Earths religions and wage crusades amongst each other. Or get excited when there's a Jersey Shore marathon? Although it's hard to imagine a species that needs social progress more than us, we could be like gods to them. Might be fun :)

John,

Aw geez, that's a worse scenario than "MARS ATTACKS". Aliens farting and laughing, buying Rush Limbaugh T-Shirts and going to Jerry Lewis film festivals. Just eat me now, please.

Until what? Until they get here, or until we go there and mess up their planet?

unitl life of some kind (and hopefully bigger than a micro-organism) is discovered on another planet... And then all the religions of the world will start spinning and backpedaling to explain how this new discovery "completely works" with all their fables about God, and his rules.... and all the other bunk they been selling, killing and dying for, for centuries...

V...

Hehehe, well at least the Catholic Church won't burn these astronomers at the stake like they used to for showing that "God" doesn't just favor this little shiny blue dirtball at the far end of a spiral galaxy.

The great thing about illogical and nonsensical fairy tales is that they can be respun to fit with the times. What would really be hilarious is if most of the "miracles" that happened in the old and new testament were similar to the "miracles" that tribes in Indonesia, Micronesia and New Guinea experienced during WWII.

:p

Remember Bruno!

Cargo Cults ftw.

"The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also."

-Mark Twain

It's either that or the captain has to have sex with green alien slave women.

The article states "average surface temperature", which implies that the actual temperatures at any given place on the planet could be higher or lower, depending on location, time of year, local weather conditions, and probably other factors.

Water only freezes at that temperature at sea level (i.e. 14.7 lb/in^2). At lower pressure, water boils and freezes faster, hence the reason why your blood would "boil" if you were exposed to the vacuum of space.

Because of the dense atmosphere on this planet, even though it is physically that cold, water remains liquid because of the highly dense atmosphere...at least within the middle temperature along the gradient they gave us.

The planet is gravitationally locked, which means there would be a wide band stretching around the planet from pole to pole that would provide a variety of climates. Besides, it gets colder than that at our planet's poles and the polar bears, penguins, seals, fish, and other critters living on or under the ice don't seem to mind! :)

Also, there may be an ocean with a frozen surface that's heated from below by volcanic or technotic activity, as we image Saturn's moon, Enceladus, to be.

Astronomy - There is a lake EXACTLY like that under the Ice in Antarctica, it's under Vanda Station and subsequently named Lake Vanda.

Astronomy, you describe this habitable band as "stretching... from pole to pole". Since the planet may be tidally locked to gliese, as our moon is to us, it would indeed rotate once on it's vertical axis for each orbit around the star, making the habitable zone a vertical circle. However, to some hypothetical being living there, wouldn't it seem to be more like around the "equator"? I guess I'm making a huge assumption here, but if I lived there, I'd likely reckon everything in terms of the one red star, always in one position and identify that as "north" (although it wouln't be really, and it would take a gliesean Copernicus to truely point out the difference)?

Alan,

"The Edge Between Day and Night"... sounds like a great title for the first alien soap opera!

"My own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent," Steven Vogt, an astrophysicist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, told reporters today. "I have almost no doubt about it."

This fellow needs to go back and take remedial chemistry. As someone already pointed out in post #1.2, tidally locked planets are actually horrible candidates for supporting life. The atmosphere--if there ever was one--ends up completely frozen on the surface of the cold side of the planet through deposition. That leaves no atmosphere left to insulate and hold moisture in the static so-called "goldilocks zone" along the day/night division. Dreams are often nice. But let us not confuse them with reality and fact.

First off, post 1.2 is incorrect. The only tidal locked planet we have to observe is Mercury (and the Moon), and neither are massive enough to have an atmosphere anyway.

We do have Venus, however, whose retrograde rotation is slow enough that one year on Venus is only two days long. That's not tidal locked, but it means a long day (and long night) and Venus has no problem with a "freezing atmosphere".

Secondly, a tidal locked planet would have a constant terminator zone. If one side is too hot for life, and the other side is too cold for life, then somewhere in the twilight terminator, there WILL be a zone that is "just right". There can't not be a transition band, and it would stay a constant, balmy just right all day and all night.

I'm pretty sure his 100% figure comes from the fact that there has to be a habitable temperature zone. And forget about tidal locked atmosphere freezing. Even if true (which there is no data to support or even suggest) a planet this massive would still have a gaseous phase terminator coinciding with the light/dark and temperature terminator.

Soylent:

First of all, our sun is much more powerful than Gliese. So of course Venus "darker" side is going to be warmer than 581g's dark side. That planet's dark side is probably well below the temperature required for total atmsopheric freezing.

And even if it wasn't, who's to say that the planet is even rocky?

If the planet has a rocky composition like Earth's....

That's a big "IF". For all we know, this is a "Mini-Jupiter" not a Super Earth. Where does this scientist get his 100% certainty if he doesn't even know what the planet's made of?

We do have Venus, however, whose retrograde rotation is slow enough that one year on Venus is only two days long. That's not tidal locked, but it means a long day (and long night) and Venus has no problem with a "freezing atmosphere".

A Venusian "day" is actually equivalent to 117 earth days. That's aproximately 1400 hours of daylight followed by 1400 hours of darkness. That's a far cry from a tidally locked planet with zero rotation, where the dark side of the planet has an unlimited amount of time to cool through radiation.

It is believed that in the case of a tidally-locked, earth-like, rocky planet with water present, once the atmosphere on the dark side cools to the point of precipitation, and then deposition, thermodynamics will drive the process until there is no atmosphere left. Solidifying atmosphere on the cold side would reduce atmospheric pressure there, continually drawing more air from the hot side. With no rotation crossing the day/night divider, there is no mechanism to return the atmosphere back to the hot side in a cycle. It keeps flowing to the region on the dark side of the planet that is cold enough for deposition to occur and solidifying there, until there is no atmosphere left.

Secondly, a tidal locked planet would have a constant terminator zone. If one side is too hot for life, and the other side is too cold for life, then somewhere in the twilight terminator, there WILL be a zone that is "just right". There can't not be a transition band, and it would stay a constant, balmy just right all day and all night.

As more and more atmosphere is lost to deposition on the dark side of the planet, atmospheric pressure reduces over the entire planet--including the day/night divider zone. Any liquid water in that zone would eventually boil away in the low pressure and be deposited on the dark side of the planet as well. With no atmosphere, there is no "transition band"--merely a day/night terminator.

Simulations of the Atmospheres of Synchronously Rotating Terrestrial
Planets Orbiting M Dwarfs: Conditions for Atmospheric Collapse and
the Implications for Habitability

Simulations of the Atmospheres of Synchronously Rotating Terrestrial

Planets Orbiting M Dwarfs: Conditions for Atmospheric Collapse and

the Implications for Habitability

http://crack.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/ftp/pub/gillett/joshi.pdf

Very in-depth study on simulations and theoretical models of atmospheric conditions of tidally locked worlds around M-dwarfs.

Quote from a summary of the study found at http://www.treitel.org/Richard/rass/tidelock01.txt :

"In fact the model showed that in the entire upper atmosphere superrotates, rotating around the planet even faster than the planet rotates, similar to Venus. Meanwhile the lower atmosphere has a very different circulation, with warm day-side air streaming at ground level across the equatorial terminators at mean speeds of 20 mph, cooling and returning to day-side across the poles (equatorial winds blow away from the day-side, while winds over the poles blow towards the day-side). So heat is rapidly distributed across the whole surface, warming the dark-side significantly and preventing atmospheric collapse."

The authors' mathematical model relies heavily on the presence of superrotation of the atmosphere supposedly being driven by the once-a-year rotation of the planet, as well as large Hadley cells. However, these presumed conditions are based heavily on observations of Titan which, although tidally locked around Saturn, actually experiences seasons since it is not tidally locked to its actual source of heat--the sun. Like Venus, solar heating affects all sides of Titan over the course of its year, driving it's superrotating winds. The presumption that superrotation would occur on a planet that is tidally locked to its heat source is mathetically speculative, at best. Since Hadley cells are driven exclusively by solar radiation, presuming that they would extend further than a modest distance beyond the terminator zone is also mathematically speculative. Even with such speculation in place, the authors of the paper acknowledge that atmospheric callapse would still be expected to occur outside a relatively narrow combined range of mathematical parameters.

The model doesn't rely on superrotation and Hadley circulation, it predicts them. That the simulation runs reproduced previous work (Del Genio et al. 1993, Gierasch 1975) was taken as yet another confirmation of the simulation.

"The ability of the SGCM to reproduce earlier results shows that it is a valid tool for use in simulating the circulation of slowly rotating planets."

The model predicts atmospheric collapse outside of several parameters, primarily atmospheric composition. Nitrogen based atmospheres never reached the 80K limit for collapse even in the lowest optical depth runs.

At any rate, the claim that there can be stable, warm, life-sustaining atmospheres on tidally locked worlds providing that the atmospheric composition is also what would be found on a life sustaining world is based on mathematical models, physical theory, simulation runs, and observation of similar (though not exact) conditions in our own solar system (Titan and Venus).

What is your speculation that no atmospheres can exist on tidally locked worlds based on?

Thats the average temperature... if you read that it's tidally locked that means the temperature ranges from too hot to too cold with the longitude boundary the "habitable region" on the planet. In this case the planet would have one "hot west" pole and one "cold east pole" or vice versa. Liquid water could exist in the boundary region.

The model doesn't rely on superrotation and Hadley circulation, it predicts them. That the simulation runs reproduced previous work (Del Genio et al. 1993, Gierasch 1975) was taken as yet another confirmation of the simulation.

It assumes them. Mathematical models are not objective in any sense of the word. They are designed to test parameters. Since this model was designed to reflect a planetary condition we have never observed, it necessarily assumes certain mechanics. Even if they are able to plug in parameters that enable their model to function within an acceptable range, this should not be confused with factual observation and conclusion. That their mathematic theories agree in part with previous speculation on the subject is evidence that they are basing their work on similar theory and mathematical parameters, not confirmation that it is "correct".

What is your speculation that no atmospheres can exist on tidally locked worlds based on?

Basic thermodynamics and the realization that the winds we observe on both Titan and Venus are driven by the solar heat that they receive as they rotate in relation to the sun. Unless I missed it, the authors made no acknowledgement of the reality that their repeated comparisons to Titan and Venus are limited or even invalidated by the simple fact that both bodies experience seasons due to their continuous rotation relative to the sun. Assuming some of their properties upon a planet that is truly tidally locked to its sun is merely that: An assumption. I have no problem with people proposing mathematical models and theories and making assumptions. But I am careful not to confuse such things with proven reality.

There is no "proven reality" of a nitrogen based atmosphere around an earth-like massed body that is tidally locked to its primary. The best simulations we have say that nitrogen based atmospheres won't collapse, especially if there's CO2 in the mix.

This is a response to 8.11

I could be wrong but it's my understanding that you wouldn't be able to continuously draw warm air from the "day" side to the "night" side without re-circulating the air back to to day side. Is that not what fluid dynamics is about. The only way you could eventually run out of atmosphere is if it was being "boiled" away due to it's proximity to it's host star, but this is a smaller, cooler red star so presumably that's not a factor. Maybe it's not, but still when you move a volume of air from one place to another, something has to fill the void that was left. Can anyone confirm this?

That would work if the atmosphere was inside a container. There's no void when the atmosphere *is* the container. Atmospheric collapse happens pretty often, especially in the outer reaches of a solar system. The gases freeze and deposit on the surface like snow, then just sits there.

Atmospheres can partially collapse as well. The upper parts of Earth's atmosphere, the thermosphere, collapsed fairly recently then rebounded. There is evidence to suggest that the entire thing froze once, resulting in a "snowball Earth". So even collapsed atmospheres don't necessarily mean an end point.

Recent partial atmospheric collapse information can be found here: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/15jul_thermosphere/

Before we ever travel to a habitable planet, the Lord will come first. Unless we beam ourselves there, than we will most likely meet Him halfway.

Countless materials and technology that the general population benefits from everyday come from the ingenuity of NASA scientists and engineers who solve some of the hardest problems known to man. Next time why don't you get your head out of your rear-end.

You may be discriminating against the little green men that always have their heads up their rear-ends. You may have to go through counseling, on your 200 year trip back.

If that's the way you feel, why are you wasting your time reading this story when you could be re-reading some right-wing manifesto? You're obviously more interested in politics than science.

Stryke (troll)

Wellfare? seriously? Where do you think we got most of the technology we use in every day life, including the internet we're using right now?

Government contracted R&D!

The private sector only devotes R&D to projects on its own when it can see a major and definite payoff 5-10years down the pipeline, AT MOST!

Government sponsored R&D on the other hand helps to expedite the process by covering all the necessary generational hurdles that come in the interim between theoretical and practical!

Think of all of the amazing amount of resources that are out in space. I guarantee that the first companies that are capable of successfully mining space for its resources will be wealthier than any prior business in history!

Well, why aren't we seeing a private sector space-race to the asteroid belt given the trillions+ that are just floating about between Mars and Jupiter? BECAUSE THE TECHNOLOGY ISN'T CLOSE TO THERE YET. Well, buddy, how do we get companies to develop the technology to go mine space if it might take 30years+ of continuously funded R&D (i.e. billions of $$$) to even develop most of the necessary tech? After all, most patents expire in a far shorter time than that, nearly all companies don't want billions of dollars of R&D just ending up in public domain before they get even close to their final goal.

But then again, you're right, we should worry about education. Clearly you are lacking in it since you are incapable of making the logical inference for why science and space exploration are necessary activities which you find fruitless and trivial.

Surely we could find any number of frivolous spending programs that could be used to improve funding of eduction...how about reducing/ending farming-subsidies? How about preventing companies from using transfer-pricingto engineer fake losses and avoid paying billions in income taxes they should ordinarily owe! There's plenty of useless entitlement programs and pet-projects that the senate tacks onto bills every year. Let's devote THAT to education.

Why do half-whits like you always feel that NASA should be the target of your reallocation.

Astonomy

That's OK, You can read it, I will stick to the Truth. Manifesto's don't interest me.

If scientists said the planet had oil then the oil companies would start building rockets right away.

they would defenitely find a way to get there if there was oil!!! that would be all the inspiration they need

@ronpaulftw: "Countless materials and technology that the general population benefits from everyday come from the ingenuity of NASA scientists and engineers who solve some of the hardest problems known to man. Next time why don't you get your head out of your rear-end."

Response: That is a red herring. The proposition that innovation in materials and technology begins and ends with NASA is patently ridiculous. I suppose we were all cavemen, then NASA did a moon shot, and now everything is wonderful? No, invention, engineering and innovation were in full swing long before Werner Von Braun was tinkering with rockets in Nazi Germany. For your information, NASA grew out of the United States' arms race with the Soviet Union, so maybe you think War is the mother of all progress, huh? You enjoy a nice cold glass of Tang, and perhaps a bite of freeze-dried Neapolitan ice cream. NASA is only one among the many offspring of human innovation. Cheers.

Certainly you didn't think I was meaning that all inventions and engineering originated at NASA? Where in my statement did I even imply this line of thinking? Perhaps you should join your friend Stryke by removing your head from your rear. Salutations.

If my boss paid me millions more I too would keep microwave ovens the same all this time since invention. A stupid boss is a good boss.

Tryke, you probably need to read up on how many projects are funded before assuming our tax dollars pay for space projects. Did it ever occur to you that most of our current technology is a direct result of such "spending"? We reap what we sow, so the saying goes. I would much rather fund a project that can benefit us all rather than support a welfare recipient who only uses my tax money to buy booze and drugs. Did you realize how much of our federal budget is already earmarked for social programs? Did you know it is more than half? The remainder primarily funds our defense budget (hey, without a great defense.....) along with other spending we just can't do without. Very little of the federal budget has anything to do with scientific studies. If you didn't know, now you do. But don't believe me, and I don't want you to, so I urge you to research this on your own time using (gasp....a technology) the internet. Free advice only cost me the time to administer it.

ronpaulftw

Certainly you didn't think I was meaning that allinventions and engineering originated at NASA? Where in my statement did I even imply this line of thinking? Perhaps you should join your friend Stryke by removing your head from your rear. Salutations.

This is how most of these people try to attempt and foil the facts of your argument...their knee-jerk reaction is to take whatever mention of the value you've proposed, and try and streatch it in an attempt to say things like: "see, NASA didn't invent my automobile!"

But note that neither Stryke, nor this J. Hill-1376776 person have bothered to argue against the framework that I had laid out.

These people are so myopic it's sad, especially considering that they vote, and sometimes take seats in political office...it's almost like they long for the Dark Ages.

Every sort of technology has a growth and maturing cycle, and time and time again, it has been shown that while the private sector is more wealthy than most government entities for R&D, they will not engage in R&D on their own if it doesn't have a clear payoff in under 5-10 years given the fact that most patents expire in less time.

Hence, the private sector is great at the post-fledgeling, borderline mature-stage, where they can perfect an existing technology or create conglomerations of multiple technologies for different purposes.

Therefore, government contracted R&D is necessary to bring new technologies out of fledgeling stages.

Next, NASA is a more valuable avenue for contracting $$$ because the technology developed for this agency doesn't get locked down as a national security secret and stay unknown for decades! NASA innovations hit the private sector as soon as anyone wants them!

For example, the US government still keeps battery technology a state secret. The battery banks that nuclear subs used even during the 1970's are still classified! Companies like Ford, GM and Chrysler have been petitioning the US government to release these patents because the technology is orders of magnitude better than what the private sector has accomplished as of yet...but because its identical to what is used on our nuclear submarines (many of which are still sailing)...it is classified until the sub(s) using them are decommissioned!

There are many other examples, but this is one of many.

I'm hoping more for finding some tech that allows us to travel faster-than-light. There IS a way to do it, we just haven't discovered it yet.

The story mentions sending a probe that could arrive in 200 years or so. However, in that time it's very possible that we may invent "warp" technology which would make the time and money spent on a probe a waste. Heck, we'd be able to catch up to and pass the probe before it even arrives!

@Astr0n0my-1677943 Exactly what I was going to say.. we may end up waving at the probe as we speed by it 100 years from now.

However, we have to start somewhere. Can't let that possible paradox stop us from starting. if we don't start development on a ion drive or something similar, we may not be able to make the leap to warp or close to light speed and never pass by to wave at the probe that didn't get developed ;-)

20 Light Years is approximately1.17440064X10 to the 16th power miles, that's a LOT of miles my friends.

Or 11,744,006,400,000,000 miles, with our technology we can travel 25,000 MPH, do the math.

No, with our technology, as mentioned in the article, we could manage an average velocity of 10% the speed of light over the trip. We've never BUILT one of those before, but the theory is sound.

So 80 years to get the program up and the prototype worked out, 200 years travel time, 20 years to get the probe transmissions back. Easy as cake. =)

I hope our Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grand Children are as interested in this stuff as WE are. :)

I want to go, because my neighbors dogs are driving me crazy. I just hope the whole planet isn't full of dogs.

Ha! Maybe slightly smarter dogs playing Xbox 360 instead of cards! Too funny!

If they wanted to wipe us out, they'd just sling a few asteroids at us. We can adapt to melting ice caps. The human race has survived through both an ice and a wet age (if you go far enough back). We're headed back into a wet age. I doubt they are causing that. ^_^

That's true, and we can set up another McDonalds resturant. "Do you want regular or green cheese on your hamburgar?"

Forget the hamburgers, we could have snow cones.

I don't think the little green people would want them, they don't spend enough money to keep the green cheese factories going.

"The republicans said " NO", and " All research related to this issue should be stopped, and as a pledge to America.. WE will no longer fund scientific research""

Cite?

Well, Bush's God didn't want the US to fund stemcell research, and he managed to kill the X-33 program in his first year of office.

Unless the tech was meant to blow up cave-dwelling brown people or help drill more oil, Bush cut funding to it.

Considering the "Pledge" is a revisit to failed Bush policies, I would say that the Republicans in power are completely clueless and against human advancement and improvement

...Corporate Oligarchy to the rescue!!!

Did the Republicans specifically say that they would defund research into planet-finding? Is this effort getting any gov't monies to begin with? Otherwise, it's just partisan bickering that's detracting from a very exciting development (woodsyhowl, logdump, I'm looking in your direction).

Besides, Obama killed the Constellation program, so this sort of thing is nicely bipartisan.

So in an infinite universe full of solar systems earth is the only possible life sustaining planet? Good God how tiny minded! conceptualize infinite please!

@ Yeah, Yeah - There's a reason why any astronomical object is tidally locked. Could be that the sphere is unbalanced internally, like our Moon, with a un-molten core, or one which is temporarily locked while its atmosphere slowly accumulates on the far side, freezing up, and depletes on the sun-side as it melts or boils out. Eventually, the body will become unbalanced, flip over, and begin the process of atmosphere transference around to the dark side again.

Natural cycles can range from daily, seasonally, annually, and upwards - even old Sol makes a regular trip around the Milky Way, and on Earth we're familiar with multi-year cycles in reproduction of cicadas, rabbits, gulls, etc.

The universe is not infinite,large or small.

With a light side and a dark side there should still be a lot of convection going on on the planet. As a rule of thumb, cold invades hot, so the cold dark-side probably pushes into the hot light side creating all sorts of weather. Its not as if the planet has no atmosphere.

It could be a lot like Venus....

I don't think Creationism must necessarily exclude the thought that God created something else too. But yes, if their stuff is better than our stuff, we'll feel slighted!

The idea that the earth revolves around the sun made religion uncomfortable for a long time, but now they accept this as being the way God made things. Evolution is still making religion uncomfortable, but I have faith that it too will eventually be widely accepted as being the way God made things. So too would the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe.

Faith is not what causes people to reject scientific findings. Fear is.

Not only the weather patterns, but the social politics would be hell: "Those hot heads don't know anything, they're just blowing steam!" "Oh, yeah? Well, you can just cool it, ice man!" "Hey, stop the hatin'... don't be temperaturist!"

God help them if they have tbaggers and so called conservatives.