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Biosignature found

Marvin the Martian

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Astronomers found biosignature on a planet a mere 12 light years away. A planet has chemicals in the atmosphere that, as far as we know, only come from marine algae. The planet is K2-18B. They are not saying this is proof of life yet, but it is a very positive sign in that direction and the closest we have come to saying there is life on another planet.

 
Astronomers found biosignature on a planet a mere 12 light years away. A planet has chemicals in the atmosphere that, as far as we know, only come from marine algae. The planet is K2-18B. They are not saying this is proof of life yet, but it is a very positive sign in that direction and the closest we have come to saying there is life on another planet.


Kewl.
 
Astronomers found biosignature on a planet a mere 12 light years away. A planet has chemicals in the atmosphere that, as far as we know, only come from marine algae. The planet is K2-18B. They are not saying this is proof of life yet, but it is a very positive sign in that direction and the closest we have come to saying there is life on another planet.

There’s some good fishing there. But now, everyone will want to go.
 
Astronomers found biosignature on a planet a mere 12 light years away. A planet has chemicals in the atmosphere that, as far as we know, only come from marine algae. The planet is K2-18B. They are not saying this is proof of life yet, but it is a very positive sign in that direction and the closest we have come to saying there is life on another planet.

124 light years.
 
Astronomers found biosignature on a planet a mere 12 light years away. A planet has chemicals in the atmosphere that, as far as we know, only come from marine algae. The planet is K2-18B. They are not saying this is proof of life yet, but it is a very positive sign in that direction and the closest we have come to saying there is life on another planet.

Yawn. Wake is when there’s proof. I’m so tired of these teasers. Same with Bigfoot. Ufos. DBMs breaking Twitter people and nothing ever happens.

Let’s just get back to clarkson’s farm
 
Yawn. Wake is when there’s proof. I’m so tired of these teasers. Same with Bigfoot. Ufos. DBMs breaking Twitter people and nothing ever happens.

Let’s just get back to clarkson’s farm
It is not the same a bigfoot. If we can reach half the speed of light with a probe, we can be there in 60 years. To quote Odd Ball, "have a little faith baby have a little faith, always with the negative vibes".
 
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It’s like the signal from osu. Until confirmation I don’t care. (Not an attack at your post Marv). All of it is so fascinating
"Always with the negative vibes". The only way to get confirmation is with a probe that can reach speeds of half the speed of light.
 
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Astronomers found biosignature on a planet a mere 12 light years away. A planet has chemicals in the atmosphere that, as far as we know, only come from marine algae. The planet is K2-18B. They are not saying this is proof of life yet, but it is a very positive sign in that direction and the closest we have come to saying there is life on another planet.

That was the planet I visited with @BradStevens mom. I thought I had cleaned that up. My bad.
 
I believe the story of creation and Genesis in the Bible correlate. God, who can take any form, used evolution as his mechanism for Creation.

I'm an old earth creationist. But what does it really matter?

If some douche proves no god evolutionary creation did he do anything. NO. The ****in bastard could have used his time, money, resources, and lets say "knowledge" for practical purposes.
 
It is not the same a bigfoot. If we can reach half the speed of light with a probe, we can be there in 60 years. To quote Odd Ball, "have a little faith baby have a little faith, always with the negative vibes".
It's 124 light years away. Traveling at half the speed of light would take 248 years, not 60. And the signal the probe sends would take another 124 years to get back to earth. A 372 year mission, with very little

Warp 2 would get us there in 62, but you'd have to invent warp travel first-- and then you'd still have to deal with 124 years of signal lag, or invent tech that solves that problem too. Of course, those problems are related, so solving how you accelerate solid objects to faster than the speed of light might solve both problems.

Manning a probe with AI versions of mapped human minds might solve some of the logistical maintenance issues of a probe, but how many spare parts do you send? How do you keep the AI from going insane and becoming the borg? Lol.
 
It's 124 light years away. Traveling at half the speed of light would take 248 years, not 60. And the signal the probe sends would take another 124 years to get back to earth. A 372 year mission, with very little

Warp 2 would get us there in 62, but you'd have to invent warp travel first-- and then you'd still have to deal with 124 years of signal lag, or invent tech that solves that problem too. Of course, those problems are related, so solving how you accelerate solid objects to faster than the speed of light might solve both problems.

Manning a probe with AI versions of mapped human minds might solve some of the logistical maintenance issues of a probe, but how many spare parts do you send? How do you keep the AI from going insane and becoming the borg? Lol.


Well, it would suck for us alive now to not know the results if we sent a probe, but we should do it anyway. The Cologne cathedral took 632 years to build. I suppose they knew from the start that trying to build it would take many generations. We should think and do the same here.
 
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It is not the same a bigfoot. If we can reach half the speed of light with a probe, we can be there in 60 years. To quote Odd Ball, "have a little faith baby have a little faith, always with the negative vibes".
The fastest object that we've ever produced in space travels at about 400,000mph. That's indeed reeeeaaallly fast.
The problem is, the speed of light is about 670,000,000mph.
So the fastest thing we've made is 1 / 1675th the speed of light.

We ain't getting there any time soon.
 
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Well, it would suck for us alive now to not know the results if we sent a probe, but we should do it anyway. The Cologne cathedral took 632 years to build. I suppose they knew from the start that trying to build it would take many generations. We should think and do the same here.
If I thought we had a reasonable chance of success, I'd say we should consider it. But we are so far from developing the tech we'd need to give it a chance of working that it makes no sense to consider it right now.
 
If I thought we had a reasonable chance of success, I'd say we should consider it. But we are so far from developing the tech we'd need to give it a chance of working that it makes no sense to consider it right now.

I'd be more inclined to take a SETI approach and point a signal toward that planet (actually where that planet will be in 124 years).
 
If I thought we had a reasonable chance of success, I'd say we should consider it. But we are so far from developing the tech we'd need to give it a chance of working that it makes no sense to consider it right now.
Pioneer and Voyager all provided a wealth on info long beyond their expected life span. We shouldn't let lack of tech stop us. That's part of what drives future tech.
 
I'd be more inclined to take a SETI approach and point a signal toward that planet (actually where that planet will be in 124 years).
Reasonable...although they are way more likely to find life of the cellular or plant variety, which isn't likely to be sending a response.
 
Pioneer and Voyager all provided a wealth on info long beyond their expected life span. We shouldn't let lack of tech stop us. That's part of what drives future tech.
There is a pretty big difference between Voyager and launching a mission that will take 213,221 years to reach its destination. That's how long it would take our fastest current probe to get there.

There just isn't any reasonable chance that the probe would make it there. It would hit a meteor, or dark matter, or it would run out of power. Waste of money. Fairly questionable whether anyone would be around to get the signal, or that humanity would remember to listen for the report back.

How do you power something for 200,000 years with no solar power? Is there any nuclear device that would power thrusters for that long?

I WANT to find extraterrestrial life. But a probe isn't the solution here.
 
There is a pretty big difference between Voyager and launching a mission that will take 213,221 years to reach its destination. That's how long it would take our fastest current probe to get there.

There just isn't any reasonable chance that the probe would make it there. It would hit a meteor, or dark matter, or it would run out of power. Waste of money. Fairly questionable whether anyone would be around to get the signal, or that humanity would remember to listen for the report back.

How do you power something for 200,000 years with no solar power? Is there any nuclear device that would power thrusters for that long?

I WANT to find extraterrestrial life. But a probe isn't the solution here.


Leave it to me to comment on something i know nothing about. I would simply add that sending a probe would take a long time to get there, but the signal and results coming back would be much faster. Also, the probe can study the destination while traveling and send back reports as it goes. I can’t comment on how something like that would be powered.
 
Leave it to me to comment on something i know nothing about. I would simply add that sending a probe would take a long time to get there, but the signal and results coming back would be much faster. Also, the probe can study the destination while traveling and send back reports as it goes. I can’t comment on how something like that would be powered.
The signal coming back would take 124 years, and who knows how many times you'd have to repeat it to get it through everything that might deflect it.

In order to study the target on the way, you have to have a massive telescope on board. And then that instrument has to be built to last 100k years too. And if you're going to fix it when it breaks, you're loading spare parts too.

No electrical thing a human made has lasted 100 years. You think we can make one that lasts 100,000?

This is like saying a baby should make a nuclear submarine. Is it possible? I guess. Is it a good idea? No.
 
There is a pretty big difference between Voyager and launching a mission that will take 213,221 years to reach its destination. That's how long it would take our fastest current probe to get there.

There just isn't any reasonable chance that the probe would make it there. It would hit a meteor, or dark matter, or it would run out of power. Waste of money. Fairly questionable whether anyone would be around to get the signal, or that humanity would remember to listen for the report back.

How do you power something for 200,000 years with no solar power? Is there any nuclear device that would power thrusters for that long?

I WANT to find extraterrestrial life. But a probe isn't the solution here.
Sorry, my point wasn't to send a probe like one of those. I'm saying make it a priority and not wait for tech. Making it a priority leads technological discoveries.
 
There is a pretty big difference between Voyager and launching a mission that will take 213,221 years to reach its destination. That's how long it would take our fastest current probe to get there.

There just isn't any reasonable chance that the probe would make it there. It would hit a meteor, or dark matter, or it would run out of power. Waste of money. Fairly questionable whether anyone would be around to get the signal, or that humanity would remember to listen for the report back.

How do you power something for 200,000 years with no solar power? Is there any nuclear device that would power thrusters for that long?

I WANT to find extraterrestrial life. But a probe isn't the solution here.
Unmanned probes are the best science for the buck.
 
There is a pretty big difference between Voyager and launching a mission that will take 213,221 years to reach its destination. That's how long it would take our fastest current probe to get there.

There just isn't any reasonable chance that the probe would make it there. It would hit a meteor, or dark matter, or it would run out of power. Waste of money. Fairly questionable whether anyone would be around to get the signal, or that humanity would remember to listen for the report back.

How do you power something for 200,000 years with no solar power? Is there any nuclear device that would power thrusters for that long?

I WANT to find extraterrestrial life. But a probe isn't the solution here.
You don't power it for that long. You only power it long enough to get up to speed, and once it reaches its destination, solar radiation turns it back on.
 
You don't power it for that long. You only power it long enough to get up to speed, and once it reaches its destination, solar radiation turns it back on.
So, no course corrections, repairs, or signals returned for more than 200,000 years, and you think it will start right up?

You realize we don't even know exactly where that planet is, at the moment, right? We know where it was 124 years ago. If we are off on its location by less than half of 1 percent, we'd miss the system by half a light year, which is about 3,000,000,000,000 miles. In that case, it probably doesn't get enough sunlight to power anything. The red dwarf star is dimmer and smaller than our sun.

You ever hear of a battery that can sit with no charge for 100 years and then charge back up? You think we have one that will last 200,000 years at near absolute 0?

We'd have a better chance of getting McNutt hitting a golf ball to Pluto.
 
Well, it would suck for us alive now to not know the results if we sent a probe, but we should do it anyway. The Cologne cathedral took 632 years to build. I suppose they knew from the start that trying to build it would take many generations. We should think and do the same here.
So just how many breeding school teachers do you send to have educated kids, when they arrive? And 2nd question. Are their that many breeding school teachers left?
 
It’s hapAstronomers found biosignature on a planet a mere 12 light years away. A planet has chemicals in the atmosphere that, as far as we know, only come from marine algae. The planet is K2-18B. They are not saying this is proof of life yet, but it is a very positive sign in that direction and the closest we have come to saying there is life on another planet.

Oh My God Omg GIF by The Office
 
While there is agreement that dimethyl sulfide (DMS) on Earth comes from living organisms, there is also evidence of abiotic DMS production in space.

Researchers recently reported detection of DMS on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko — hardly a location brimming with life.

In September of last year, a team of researchers reported that in lab experiments, they were able to produce DMS by shining UV light on a simulated, hazy exoplanet atmosphere. This suggests that the reactions between a star’s photons and molecules in a planet’s atmosphere could provide a nonbiological way to produce DMS. And this February, a team of radio astronomers reported the detection of DMS in the gas and dust between stars. All of these results challenge the idea that DMS is a clear sign of life.

The team references the photochemical experiment in their paper, but argues that such reactions could not produce the amount of DMS they find on K2-18 b. Neither, they say, could comet impacts deliver DMS in the quantities that they observe with JWST.

There is also an issue of statistical significance in the data, basically there is at least a small chance that the DMS "signature" is a false positive

 
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